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THE GREAT PUSH 

PATRICK MacGILL 



THE 

GREAT PUSH 

AN EPISODE OF THE GREAT WAR 



BY 
PATRICK 
MACGILL 

AUTHOR OF "THE RED HORIZON," 

'THE RAT-PIT," "CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END," 

ETC. 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



ZD& 



COPYRIGHT, 191(5, 

By George H. Doran Company 



AUG -4 1916 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



• CW437U97 



TO 

MARGARET 

If we forget the Fairies, 
And tread upon their rings, 

God will perchance forget us, 
And think of other things. 

When we forget you, Fairies, 
Who guard our spirits' light: 

God will forget the morrow, 
And Day forget the Night. 



INTRODUCTION 

THE justice of the cause which endeav- 
ours to achieve its object by the murder- 
ing- and maiming of mankind is apt to 
be doubted by a man who has come through a 
bayonet charge. The dead lying on the fields 
seem to ask, "Why has this been done to us? 
Why have you done it, brothers ? What purpose 
has it served?" The battleline is a secret world, 
a world of curses. The guilty secrecy of war is 
shrouded in lies, and shielded by bloodstained 
swords; to know it you must be one of those 
who wage it, a party to dark and mysterious 
orgies of carnage. War is the purge of repleted 
kingdoms, needing a close place for its opera- 
tions. 

I have tried in this book to give, as far as I 
am allowed, an account of an attack in which I 
took part. Practically the whole book was writ- 
ten in the scene of action, and the chapter dealing 
with our night at Les Brebis, prior to the Big 
Push, was written in the trench between midnight 

7 



8 Introduction 

and dawn of September 25th; the concluding 
chapter in the hospital at Versailles two days 
after I had been wounded at Loos. 

Patrick MacGiu,. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction vii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. In the Advance Trenches 13 

II. Out from Nouex-les-Mines 26 

III. Preparations for Loos 45 

IV. Before the Charge 58 

V. Over the Top 76 

VI. Across the Open ......... 83 

VII. Germans at Loos 100 

VIII. How My Comrades Fared 111 

IX. At Loos 118 

X. A Night in Loos 141 

XL Loos 155 

XII. Retreat 169 

XIII. A Prisoner of War 187 

XIV. The Chaplain 201 

XV. A Lover at Loos 210 

XVI. The Ration Party 223 

XVII. Michaelmas Eve 232 

XVIII. Back at Loos 245 

XIX. Wounded 260 

XX. For Blighty 269 



THE GREAT PUSH 



THE GREAT PUSH 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE ADVANCE TRENCHES 

Now when we take the cobbled road 

We often took before, 
Our thoughts are with the hearty lads 

Who tread that way no more. 

Oh ! boys upon the level fields, 

If you could call to mind 
The wine of Cafe Pierre le Blanc 

You wouldn't stay behind. 

But when we leave the trench at night, 

And stagger neath our load, 
Grey, silent ghosts as light as air 

Come with us down the road. 

And when we sit us down to drink 

You sit beside us too, 
And drink at Cafe Pierre le Blanc 

As once you used to do. 

THE Company marched from the village 
of Les Brebis at nightfall; the moon, 
waning a little at one of its corners, 
shone brightly amidst the stars in the east, and 

under it, behind the German lines, a burning mine 

*3 



14 The Great Push 

threw a flame, salmon pink and wreathed in 
smoke, into the air. Our Company was sadly 
thinned now, it had cast off many — so many of 
its men at Cuinchy, Givenchy, and Vermelles. At 
each of these places there are graves of the 
London Irish boys who have been killed in action. 

We marched through a world of slag heaps 
and chimney stacks, the moonlight flowing down 
the sides of the former like mist, the smoke stood 
up from the latter straight as the chimneys them- 
selves. The whirr of machinery in the mine 
could be heard, and the creaking wagon wheels 
on an adjoining railway spoke out in a low, 
monotonous clank the half strangled message of 
labour. 

Our way lay up the hill, at the top we came 
into full view of the night of battle, the bursting 
shells up by Souchez, the flash of rifles by the 
village of Vermelles, the long white searchlights 
near Lens, and the star-shells, red, green and 
electric-white, rioting in a splendid blaze of colour 
over the decay, death and pity of the firing line. 
We could hear the dull thud of shells bursting in 
the fields and the sharp explosion they made 
amidst the masonry of deserted homes; you feel 



In the Advance Trenches 15 

glad that the homes are deserted, and you hope 
that if any soldiers are billeted there they are 
in the safe protection of the cellars. 

The road by which we marched was lined with 
houses all in various stages of collapse, some with 
merely a few tiles shot out of the roofs, others 
levelled to the ground. Some of the buildings 
were still peopled; at one home a woman was 
putting up the shutters and we could see some 
children drinking coffee from little tin mugs in- 
side near the door; the garret of the house was 
blown in, the rafters stuck up over the tiles like 
long, accusing fingers, charging all who passed 
by with the mischief which had happened. The 
cats were crooning love songs on the roofs, and 
stray dogs slunk from the roadway as we ap- 
proached. In the villages, with the natives gone 
and the laughter dead, there are always to be 
found stray dogs and love-making cats. The cats 
raise their primordial, instinctive yowl in villages 
raked with artillery fire, and poor lone dogs 
often cry at night to the moon, and their plaint is 
full of longing. 

We marched down the reserve slope of the 
hill in silence. At the end of the road was the 



16 The Great Push 

village ; our firing trench fringed the outer row 
of houses. Two months before an impudent 
red chimney stack stood high in air here; but 
humbled now, it had fallen upon itself, and its 
own bricks lay still as sandbags at its base, a for- 
gotten ghost with blurred outlines, it brooded, a 
stricken giant. 

The long road down the hill was a tedious, de- 
ceptive way; it took a deal of marching to make 
the village. Bill Teake growled. "One would 
think the place was tied to a string," he grumbled, 
"and some one pullin' it away!" 

We were going to dig a sap out from the 
front trench towards the German line; we drew 
our spades and shovels for the work from the 
Engineers' store at the rear and made our way 
into the labyrinth of trenches. Men were at 
their posts on the fire positions, their Balaclava 
helmets resting on their ears, their bayonets 
gleaming bright in the moonshine, their hands 
close to their rifle barrels. Sleepers lay stretched 
out on the banquette with their overcoats over 
their heads and bodies. Out on the front the 
Engineers had already taped out the night's 
work; our battalion had to dig some two hundred 



In the Advance Trenches 17 

and fifty yards of trench 3 ft. wide and 6 ft. deep 
before dawn, and the work had to be performed 
with all possible dispatch. Rumour spoke of 
thrilling days ahead; and men spoke of a big 
push which was shortly to take place. Between 
the lines there are no slackers; the safety of a 
man so often depends upon the dexterous han- 
dling of his spade; the deeper a man digs, the 
better is his shelter from bullet and bomb; the 
spade is the key to safety. 

The men set to work eagerly, one picked up 
the earth with a spade and a mate shovelled the 
loose stuff out over the meadow. The grass, very 
long now and tapering tall as the props that held 
the web of wire entanglements in air, shook gen- 
tly backwards and forwards as the slight breezes 
caught it. The night was wonderfully calm and 
peaceful; it seemed as if heaven and earth held 
no threat for the men who delved in the alleys 
of war. 

Out ahead lay the German trenches. I could 
discern their line of sandbags winding over the 
meadows and losing itself for a moment when 
it disappeared behind the ruins of a farm-house 
— a favourite resort of the enemy snipers, until 



18 The Great Push 

our artillery blew the place to atoms. Silent and 
full of mystery as it lay there in the moonlight, 
the place had a strange fascination for me. How 
interesting it would be to go out there beyond 
our most advanced outpost and have a peep at 
the place all by myself. Being a stretcher-bearer 
there was no necessity for me to dig; my work 
began when my mates ceased their labours and 
fell wounded. 

Out in front of me lay a line of barbed wire 
entanglements. 

"Our wire?" I asked the Engineer. 

"No — the Germans'/' he answered. 

I noticed a path through it, and I took my 
way to the other side. Behind me I could hear 
the thud of picks and the sharp, rasping sound of 
shovels digging into the earth, and now and again 
the whispered words of command passing from 
lip to lip. The long grass impeded my move- 
ments, tripping me as I walked, and lurking shell- 
holes caught me twice by the foot and flung me 
to the ground. Twenty yards out from the wire 
I noticed in front of me something moving on 
the ground, wiggling, as I thought, towards the 
enemy's line. I threw myself flat and watched. 



In the Advance Trenches 19 

There was no mistaking it now; it was a man, 
belly flat on the ground, moving off from our 
lines. Being a non-combatant I had no rifle, no 
weapon to defend myself with if attacked. I 
wriggled back a few yards, then got to my feet, 
recrossed the line of wires and found a com- 
pany-sergeant-major speaking to an officer. 

"There's somebody out there lying on the 
ground," I said. "A man moving off towards 
the German trenches." 

The three of us went off together and ap- 
proached the figure on the ground, which had 
hardly changed its position since I last saw it. 
It was dressed in khaki, the dark barrel of a rifle 
stretched out in front. I saw stripes on a khaki 
sleeve. . . . 

''One of a covering-party ?" asked the sergeant- 
major. 

"That's right," came the answer from the 
grass, and a white face looked up at us. 

"Quiet?" asked the S.-M. 

"Nothing doing," said the voice from the 
ground. "It's cold lying here, though. We've 
been out for four hours." 

"I did not think that the covering-party was 



20 The Great Push 

so far out," said the officer, and the two men 
returned to their company. 

I sat in the long grass with the watcher; he 
was the sergeant in command of the covering 
party. 

"Are your party out digging ?" he asked. 

"Yes, out behind us," I answered. "Is the 
covering-party a large one?" 

"About fifty of us," said the sergeant. 
"They've all got orders to shoot on sight when 
they see anything suspicious. Do you hear the 
Germans at work out there?" 

I listened; from the right front came the sound 
of hammering. 

"They're putting up barbed wire entangle- 
ments and digging a sap," said the sergeant. 
"Both sides are working and none are fighting. 
I must have another smoke," said the sergeant. 

"But it's dangerous to strike a light here," I 
said. 

"Not in this way," said the sergeant, drawing 
a cigarette and a patent flint tinder-lighter from 
his pocket. Over a hole newly dug in the earth, 
as if with a bayonet, the sergeant leant, lit the 



In the Advance Trenches 21 

cigarette in its little dug-out, hiding the glow 
with his hand. 

"Do you smoke?" he asked. 

"Yes, I smoke," and the man gave me a ciga- 
rette. 

It was so very quiet lying there. The grasses 
nodded together, whispering to one another. To 
speak of the grasses whispering during the day 
is merely a sweet idea ; but God ! they do whisper 
at night. The ancients called the winds the Un- 
seen Multitude; the grasses are long, tapering 
fingers laid on the lips of the winds. "Hush !" the 
night whispers. "Hush!" breathes the world. 
The grasses touch your ears, saying sleepily, 
"Hush! be quiet!" 

At the end of half an hour I ventured to go 
nearer the German lines. The sergeant told me 
to be careful and not to go too close to the 
enemy's trenches or working parties. "And mind 
your own covering-party when you're coming in," 
said the sergeant. "They may slip you a bullet 
or two if you're unlucky." 

Absurd silvery shadows chased one another 
up and down the entanglement props. In front, 
behind the German lines, I could hear sounds of 



22 The Great Push 

railway wagons being shunted, and the clank of 
rails being unloaded. The enemy's transports 
were busy; they clattered along the roads, and 
now and again the neighing of horses came to 
my ears. On my right a working party was out ; 
the clank of hammers filled the air. The Ger- 
mans were strengthening their wire entangle- 
ments; the barbs stuck out, I could see them in 
front of me, waiting to rip our men if ever we 
dared to charge. I had a feeling of horror for 
a moment. Then, having one more look round, 
I went back, got through the line of outposts, and 
came up to our working party, which was deep 
in the earth already. Shovels and picks were 
rising and falling, and long lines of black clay 
bulked up on either side of the trench. 

I took off my coat, got hold of a mate's idle 
shovel, and began to work. 

"That my shovel?" said Bill Teake. 

"Yes, I'm going to do a little," I answered. 
"It would never do much lying on the slope." 

"I suppose it wouldn't," he answered. "Will 
you keep it goin' for a spell?" 

"I'll do a little bit with it," I answered. 



In the Advance Trenches 23 

"You've got to go to the back of the trenches 
if you're wanting to smoke." 

"That's where I'm goin'," Bill replied. " 'Ave 
yer got any matches?" 

I handed him a box and bent to my work. It 
was quite easy to make headway; the clay was 
crisp and brittle, and the pick went in easily, mak- 
ing very little sound. M'Crone, one of our sec- 
tion, was working three paces ahead, shattering a 
square foot of earth at every blow of his instru- 
ment. 

"It's very quiet here," he said. "I suppose they 
won't fire on us, having their own party out. By 
Jove, I'm sweating at this." 

"When does the shift come to an end?" I 
asked. 

"At dawn," came the reply. He rubbed the 
perspiration from his brow as he spoke. "The 
nights are growing longer," he said, "and it will 
soon be winter again. It will be cold then." 

As he spoke we heard the sound of rifle firing 
out by the German wires. Half a dozen shots 
were fired, then followed a long moment of silent 
suspense. 



24 The Great Push 

"There's something doing," said Pryor, lean- 
ing on his pick. "I wonder what it is." 

Five minutes afterwards a sergeant and two 
men came in from listening patrol and reported 
to our officer. 

"We've just encountered a strong German 
patrol between the lines," said the sergeant. "We 
exchanged shots with them and then withdrew. 
We have no casualties, but the Germans have one 
man out of action, shot through the stomach." 

"How do you know it went through his 
stomach?" asked the officer. 

"In this way," said the sergeant. "When we 
fired one of the Germans (we were quite close to 
them) put his hands across his stomach and fell 
to the ground yellin' 'Mem Gutt! Mein Gutt!' " 

"So it did get 'im in the guts then," said Bill 
Teake, when he heard of the incident. 

"You fool!" exclaimed Pryor. "It was 'My 
God' that the German said." 

"But Pat 'as just told me that the German said 
'Mine Gut,' " Bill protested. 

"Well 'Mein Gott' (the Germans pronounce 
'Gott' like 'Gutt' on a dark night) is the same as 
'My God/ " said Pryor. 



In the Advance Trenches 25 

"Well, any'ow, that's just wot the Allymongs 
would say," Bill muttered. "It's just like them 
to call God Almighty nick names." 

When dawn showed pale yellow in a cold sky, 
and stars were fading in the west, we packed up 
and took our way out and marched back to 
Nouex-les-Mines, there to rest for a day or two. 



CHAPTER II 

OUT FROM NOUEX-LES-MINES 

Every soldier to his trade — 
Trigger sure and bayonet keen — 
But we go forth to use a spade 
Marching out from Nouex-les-Mines. 

AS I was sitting in the Cafe Pierre le Blanc 
helping Bill Teake, my Cockney mate, 
to finish a bottle of vin rouge, a snub- 
nosed soldier with thin lips who sat at a table 
opposite leant towards me and asked: 

"Are you MacGill, the feller that writes?" 
"Yes," I answered. 

"Thought I twigged yer from the photo of 
yer phiz in the papers," said the man with the 
snub nose, as he turned to his mates who were 
illustrating a previous fight in lines of beer rep- 
resenting trenches on the table. 

"See!" he said to them, "I knew 'im the mo- 
ment I clapped my eyes on 'im." 

"Hold your tongue," one of the men, a ginger- 
headed fellow, who had his trigger finger deep 

26 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 27 

in beer, made answer. Then the dripping finger 
rose slowly and was placed carefully on the table. 

"This," said Carrots, "is Richebourg, this drop 
of beer is the German trench, and these are our 
lines. Our regiment crossed at this point and 
made for this one, but somehow or another we 
missed our objective. Just another drop of beer 
and I'll show you where we got to; it was — 
Blimey! where's that bloomin' beer? 'Oo the 'ell! 
Oh! it's Gilhooley!" 

I had never seen Gilhooley before, but I had 
often heard talk of him. Gilhooley was an Irish- 
man and fought in an English regiment; he was 
notorious for his mad escapades, his dare-devil 
pranks, and his wild fearlessness. Now he was 
opposite to me, drinking a mate's beer, big, broad- 
shouldered, ungainly Gilhooley. 

The first impression the sight of him gave me 
was one of almost irresistible strength ; I felt that 
if he caught a man around the waist with his 
hand he could, if he wished it, squeeze him to 
death. He was clumsily built, but an air of placid 
confidence in his own strength gave his figure a 
certain grace of its own. His eyes glowed 
brightly under heavy brows, his jowl thrust for- 



28 The Great Push 

ward aggressively seemed to challenge all upon 
whom he fixed his gaze. It looked as if vast 
passions hidden in the man were thirsting to 
break free and rout everything. Gilhooley was 
a dangerous man to cross. Report had it that 
he was a bomber, and a master in this branch 
of warfare. Stories were told about him how he 
went over to the German trenches near Vermelles 
at dusk every day for a fortnight, and on each 
visit flung half a dozen bombs into the enemy's 
midst. Then he sauntered back to his own lines 
and reported to an officer, saying, "By Jasus ! I 
go them out of it!" 

Once, when a German sniper potting at our 
trenches in Vermelles picked of! a few of our 
men, an exasperated English subaltern gripped a 
Webley revolver and clambered over the parapet. 

"I'm going to stop that damned sniper," said 
the young officer. "I'm going to earn the V.C. 
Who's coming along with me?" 

"I'm with you," said Gilhooley, scrambling 
lazily out into the open with a couple of pet bombs 
in his hand. "By Jasus ! we'll get him out of it !" 

The two men went forward for about twenty 
yards, when the officer fell with a bullet through 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 29 

his head. Gilhooley turned round and called back, 
"Any other officer wantin' to earn the V.C. ?" 

There was no reply : Gilhooley sauntered back, 
waited in the trench till dusk, when he went 
across to the sniper's abode with a bomb and "got 
him out of it." 

A calamity occurred a few days later. The 
irrepressible Irishman was fooling with a bomb 
in the trench when it fell and exploded. Two 
soldiers were wounded, and Gilhooley went off 
to the Hospital at X. with a metal reminder of 
his discrepancy wedged in the soft of his thigh. 
There he saw Colonel Z., or "Up-you-go-and-the- 
best-of-luck," as Colonel Z. is known to the rank 
and file of the B.E.F. 

The hospital at X. is a comfortable place, and 
the men are in no hurry to leave there for the 
trenches; but when Colonel Z. pronounces them 
fit they must hasten to the fighting line again. 

Four men accompanied Gilhooley when he was 
considered fit for further fight. The five ap- 
peared before the Colonel. 

"How do you feel?" the Colonel asked the first 
man. 



30 The Great Push 

"Not well at all," was the answer. "I can't 
eat 'ardly nuffink." 

"That's the sort of man required up there," 
Colonel Z. answered. "So up you go and the 
best of luck." 

"How far can you see ?" the Colonel asked the 
next man, who had complained that his eyesight 
was bad. 

"Only about fifty yards," was the answer. 

"Your regiment is in trenches barely twenty- 
five yards from those of the enemy," the Colonel 
told him. "So up you go, and the best of luck." 

"Off you go and find the man who wounded 
you," the third soldier was told; the fourth man 
confessed that he had never killed a German. 

"You had better double up," said the Colonel. 
"It's time you killed one." 

It came to Gilhooley's turn. 

"How many men have you killed?" he was 
asked. 

"In and out about fifty," was Gilhooley's an- 
swer. 

"Make it a hundred then," said the Colonel; 
"and up you go, and the best of luck." 

"By Jasus! I'll get fifty more out of it in no 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 31 

time," said Gilhooley, and on the following day 
he sauntered into the Cafe Pierre le Blanc in 
Nouex-les-Mines, drank another man's beer, and 
sat down on a chair at the table where four 
glasses filled to the brim stood sparkling in the 
lamplight. 

Gilhooley, penniless and thirsty, had an un- 
rivalled capacity for storing beer in his person. 

"Back again, Gilhooley?" someone remarked 
in a diffident voice. 

"Back again!" said Gilhooley wearily, putting 
his hand in the pocket of his tunic and taking 
out a little round object about the size of a penny 
inkpot. 

"I hear there's going to be a big push shortly," 
he muttered. "This," he said, holding the bomb 
between trigger ringer and thumb, "will go bang 
into the enemy's trenches next charge." 

A dozen horror-stricken eyes gazed at the 
bomb for a second, and the soldiers in the cafe 
remembered how Gilhooley once, in a moment of 
distraction, forgot that a fuse was lighted, then 
followed a hurried rush, and the cafe was almost 
deserted by the occupants. Gilhooley smiled 



32 The Great Push 

wearily, replaced the bomb in his pocket, and set 
himself the task of draining the beer glasses. 

My momentary thrill of terror died away when 
the bomb disappeared, and, leaving Bill, I ap- 
proached the Wild Man's table and sat down. 

"Gilhooley?" I said. 

"Eh, what is it?" he interjected. 

"Will you have a drink with me?" I hurried to 
inquire. "Something better than this beer for 
a change. Shall we try champagne?" 

"Yes, we'll try it," he said sarcastically, and 
a queer smile hovered about his eyes. Somehow 
I had a guilty sense of doing a mean action. . . . 
I called to Bill. 

"Come on, matey," I said. 

Bill approached the table and sat down. I 
called for a bottle of champagne. 

"This is Gilhooley, Bill," I said to my mate. 
"He's the bomber we've heard so much about." 

"I suppose ye'll want to know everythin' about 
me now, seein' ye've asked me to take a drop of 
champagne," said Gilhooley, his voice rising. 
"Damn yer champagne. You think I'm a bloom- 
in' alligator in the Zoo, d'ye? Give me a bun 
and I'll do anythin' ye want me to." 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 33 

"That men should want to speak to you is 
merely due to your fame," I said. "In the dim 
recesses of the trenches men speak of your ex- 
ploits with bated breath " 

"What the devil are ye talkin' about?" asked 
Gilhooley. 

"About you," I said. 

He burst out laughing at this and clinked 
glasses with me when we drank, but he seemed 
to forget Bill. 

For the rest of the evening he was in high good 
humour, and before leaving he brought out his 
bomb and showed that it was only a dummy one, 
harmless as an egg-shell. 

"But let me get half a dozen sergeants round 
a rum jar and out comes this bomb!" said Gil- 
hooley. "Then they fly like hell and I get a 
double tot of rum." 

"It's a damned good idea," I said. "What is 
he wanting?" 

I pointed at the military policeman who had 
just poked his head through the cafe door. He 
looked round the room, taking stock of the occu- 
pants. 



34 The Great Push 

"All men of the London Irish must report to 
their companies at once," he shouted. 

"There's somethin' on the blurry boards 
again," said Bill Teake. "I suppose we've got 
to get up to the trenches to-night. We were up 
last night diggin'," he said to Gilhooley. 

Gilhooley shrugged his shoulders, took a stump 
of a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. 

"Take care of yourselves," he said as he went 
out 

At half -past nine we marched out of Nouex- 
les-Mines bound for the trenches where we had 
to continue the digging which we had started 
the night before. 

The brigade holding the firing line told us that 
the enemy were registering their range during 
the day, and the objective was the trench which 
we had dug on the previous night. . . . Then we 
knew that the work before us was fraught with 
danger; we would certainly be shelled when oper- 
ations started. In single file, with rifles and 
picks over their shoulders, the boys went out into 
the perilous space between the lines. The night 
was grey with rain ; not a star was visible in the 
drab expanse of cloudy sky, and the wet oozed 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 35 

from sandbag - and dugout; the trench itself was 
sodden, and slush squirted about the boots that 
shuffled along; it was a miserable night. One of 
our men returned to the post occupied by the 
stretcher-bearers; he had become suddenly un- 
well with a violent pain in his stomach. We took 
him back to the nearest dressing-station and there 
he was put into an Engineers' wagon which was 
returning to the village in which our regiment 
was quartered. 

Returning, I went out into the open between 
the lines. Our men were working across the 
front, little dark, blurred figures in the rainy 
greyness, picks and shovels were rising and fall- 
ing, and lumps of earth were being flung out on 
to the grass. The enemy were already shelling 
on the left, the white flash of shrapnel and 
the red, lurid flames of bursting concussion shells 
lit up the night. So far the missiles were either 
falling short or overshooting their mark, and no- 
body had been touched. I just got to our com- 
pany when the enemy began to shell it. There 
was a hurried flop to earth in the newly-dug 
holes, and I was immediately down flat on my 
face on top of several prostrate figures, a shrap- 



6 The Great Push 

nel burst in front, and a hail of singing bullets 
dug into the earth all round. A concussion shell 
raced past overhead and broke into splinters by 
the fire trench, several of the pieces whizzing 
back as far as the working party. 

There followed a hail of shells, flash on flash, 
and explosion after explosion over our heads; 
the moment was a ticklish one, and I longed for 
the comparative safety of the fire trench. Why 
had I come out? I should have stopped with the 
other stretcher-bearers. But what did it matter ? 
I was in no greater danger than any of my mates ; 
what they had to stick I could stick, for the mo- 
ment at least. 

The shelling subsided as suddenly as it had 
begun. I got up again to find my attention di- 
rected towards something in front ; a dark figure 
kneeling on the ground. I went forward and 
found a dead soldier, a Frenchman, a mere skele- 
ton with the flesh eaten away from his face, lean- 
ing forward on his entrenching tool over a little 
hole that he had dug in the ground months be- 
fore. 

A tragedy was there, one of the sorrowful 
sights of war. The man, no doubt, had been in 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 37 

a charge — the French made a bayonet attack 
across this ground in the early part of last winter 
— and had been wounded. Immediately he was 
struck he got out his entrenching tool and en- 
deavoured to dig himself in. A few shovels ful 
of earth were scooped out when a bullet struck 
him, and he leaned forward on his entrenching 
tool, dead. Thus I found him; and the picture 
in the grey night was one of a dead man resting 
for a moment as he dug his own grave. 

"See that dead man?" I said to one of the dig- 
ging party. 

"H'm ! there are hundreds of them lying here," 
was the answer, given almost indifferently. "I 
had to throw four to one side before I could start 
digging!" 

I went back to the stretcher-bearers again ; the 
men of my own company were standing under 
a shrapnel-proof bomb store, smoking and hum- 
ming ragtime in low, monotonous voices. Music- 
hall melodies are so melancholy at times, so full 
of pathos, especially on a wet night under shell 
fire. 

"Where are the other stretcher-bearers?" I 
asked. 



38 The Great Push 

"They've gone out to the front to their com- 
panies," I was told. "Some of their men have 
been hit." 

"Badly?" 

"No one knows," was the answer. "Are our 
boys all right?" 

"As far as I could see they're safe; but they're 
getting shelled in an unhealthy manner." 

''They've left off firing now," said one of my 
mates. "You should've seen the splinters com- 
ing in here a minute ago, pit! pit! plop! on the 
sandbags. It's beastly out in the open." 

A man came running along the trench, stum- 
bled into our shelter, and sat down on a sand- 
bag. 

"You're the London Irish?" he asked. 

"Stretcher-bearers," I said. "Have you been 
out?" 

"My God! I have," he answered. " 'Tisn't 
half a do, either. A shell comes over and down 
I flops in the trench. My mate was standing on 
the parapet and down he fell atop of me. God! 
'twasn't half a squeeze; I thought I was burst like 
a bubble. 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 39 

"'Git off, matey,' I yells, Tm squeezed to 
death!' 

" 'Squeezed to death,' them was my words. 
But he didn't move, and something warm and 
sloppy ran down my face. It turned me sick. . . . 
I wriggled out from under and had a look. . . . 
He was dead, with half his head blown 
away. . . . Your boys are sticking to the work 
out there; just going on with the job as if noth- 
ing was amiss. When is the whole damned thing 
to come to a finish?" 

A momentary lull followed, and a million 
sparks fluttered earthwards from a galaxy of 
searching star-shells. 

"Why are such beautiful lights used in the 
killing of men?" I asked myself. Above in the 
quiet the gods were meditating, then, losing pa- 
tience, they again burst into irrevocable rage, 
seeking, as it seemed, some obscure and fierce 
retribution. 

The shells were loosened again; there was no 
escape from their frightful vitality, they crushed, 
burrowed, exterminated; obstacles were broken 
down, and men's lives were flicked out like flies 
off a window pane. A dug-out flew skywards, 



40 The Great Push 

and the roof beams fell in the trench at our 
feet. We crouched under the bomb-shelter, mute, 
pale, hesitating. Oh ! the terrible anxiety of men 
who wait passively for something to take place 
and always fearing the worst!" 

"Stretcher-bearers at the double !" 

We met him, crawling in on all fours like a 
beetle, the first case that came under our care. 
We dressed a stomach wound in the dug-out, 
and gave the boy two morphia tablets. . . . 
He sank into unconsciousness and never recov- 
ered. His grave is out behind the church of 
Loos-Gohelle, and his cap hangs on the arm of 
the cross that marks his sleeping place. A man 
had the calf of his right leg blown away; he died 
from shock; another got a bullet through his 
skull, another . . . But why enumerate how 
young lives were hurled away from young 
bodies? . . . 

On the field of death, the shells, in colossal 
joy, chorused their terrible harmonies, making 
the heavens sonorous with their wanton and un- 
bridled frenzy ; star-shells, which seemed at times 
to be fixed on ceiling of the sky, oscillated in a 
dazzling whirl of red and green — and men died. 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 41 

. . . We remained in the trenches the next day. 
They were very quiet, and we lay at ease in our 
dug-outs, read week-old papers, wrote letters and 
took turns on sentry-go. On our front lay a dull 
brown, monotonous level and two red-brick vil- 
lages, Loos and Hulluch. Our barbed-wire en- 
tanglement, twisted and shell-scarred, showed 
countless rusty spikes which stuck out ominous 
and forbidding. A dead German hung on a wire 
prop, his feet caught in a cheval de frise, the 
skin of his face peeling away from his bones, 
and his hand clutching the wire as if for support. 
He had been out there for many months, a fool- 
hardy foe who got a bullet through his head when 
examining our defences. 

Here, in this salient, the war had its routine 
and habits, everything was done with regimental 
precision, and men followed the trade of arms as 
clerks follow their profession: to each man was 
allocated his post, he worked a certain number 
of hours, slept at stated times, had breakfast at 
dawn, lunch at noon, and tea at four. The ration 
parties called on the cave-dwellers with the 
promptitude of the butcher and baker, who at- 
tend to the needs of the villa-dwellers. 



42 The Great Push 

The postmen called at the dug-outs when dusk 
was settling, and delivered letters and parcels. 
Letter-boxes were placed in the parados walls 
and the hours of collection written upon them in 
pencil or chalk. Concerts were held in the big 
dug-outs, and little supper parties were fashion- 
able when parcels were bulky. Tea was drunk in 
the open, the soldiers ate at looted tables, spread 
outside the dug-out doors. Over the "Savoy" a 
picture of the Mother of Perpetual Succour was 
to be seen and the boys who lived there swore 
that it brought them good luck ; they always won 
at Banker and Brag. All shaved daily and 
washed with perfumed soaps. 

The artillery exchanged shots every morning 
just to keep the guns clean. Sometimes a rifle 
shot might be heard, and we would ask, "Who is 
firing at the birds on the wire entanglements?" 
The days were peaceful then, but now all was 
different. The temper of the salient had 
changed. 

In the distance we could see Lens, a mining 
town with many large chimneys, one of which 
was almost hidden in its own smoke. No doubt 
the Germans were working the coal mines. Loos 



Out from Nouex-les-Mines 43 

looked quite small, there was a big slag-heap on 
its right, and on its left was a windmill with 
shattered wings. We had been shelling the vil- 
lage persistently for days, and, though it was 
not battered as Philosophe and Maroc were bat- 
tered, many big, ugly rents and fractures were 
showing on the red-brick houses. 

But it stood its beating well; it takes a lot of 
strafing to bring down even a jerry-built village. 
Houses built for a few hundred francs in times 
of peace, cost thousands of pounds to demolish 
in days of war. I suppose war is the most costly 
means of destruction. 

Rumours flew about daily. Men spoke of a 
big push ahead, fixed the date for the great 
charge, and, as proof of their gossip, pointed at 
innumerable guns and wagons of shell which 
came through Les Brebis and Nouex-les-Mines 
daily. Even the Germans got wind of our activ- 
ities, and in front of the blue-black slag-heap on 
the right of Loos they placed a large white board 
with the question written fair in big, black let- 
ters: 



44 The Great Push 

"WHEN IS THE BIG PUSH COMING OFF? 
WE ARE WAITING." 

A well-directed shell blew the board to pieces 
ten minutes after it was put up. 

I had a very nice dug-out in these trenches. 
It burrowed into the chalk, and its walls were 
as white as snow. When the candle was lit in the 
twilight, the most wonderfully soft shadows 
rustled over the roof and walls. The shadow of 
an elbow of chalk sticking out in the wall over my 
bed looked like the beak of a great formless vul- 
ture. On a closer examination I found that I 
had mistaken a wide-diffused bloodstain for a 
shadow. A man had come into the place once 
and he died there; his death was written in red 
on the wall. 

I named the dug-out "The Last House in the 
World." Was it not? It was the last tenanted 
house in our world. 

Over the parapet of the trench was the Un- 
known with its mysteries deep as those of the 
grave. 



CHAPTER III 

PREPARATIONS FOR LOOS 

"Death will give us all a clean sheet." — Dudley Pryor. 

WE, the London Irish Rifles, know Les 
Brebis well, know every cafe and esta- 
minet, every street and corner, every 
house, broken or sound, every washerwoman, 
wineshop matron, handy cook, and pretty girl. 
Time after time we have returned from the 
trenches to our old billet to find the good house- 
wife up and waiting for us. She was a lank 
woman, made and clothed anyhow. Her gar- 
ments looked as if they had been put on with a 
pitchfork. Her eyes protruded from their sock- 
ets, and one felt that if her tightly strained 
eyelids relaxed their grip for a moment the eyes 
would roll out on the floor. Her upper teeth 
protruded, and the point of her receding chin had 
lost itself somewhere in the hollow of her neck. 
Her pendant breasts hung flabbily, and it was a 
miracle how her youngest child, Gustave, a tot 

45 



46 The Great Push 

of seven months, could find any sustenance there. 
She had three children, who prattled all through 
the peaceful hours of the day. When the enemy 
shelled Les Brebis the children were bundled 
down into the cellar, and the mother went out to 
pick percussion caps from the streets. These 
she sold to officers going home on leave. The 
value of the percussion cap was fixed by the dam- 
age which the shell had done. A shell which fell 
on Les Brebis school and killed many men was 
picked up by this good woman, and at the pres- 
ent moment it is in my possession. We nick- 
named this woman "J oan of Arc." 

We had a delightful billet in this woman's 
house. We came in from war to find a big fire 
in the stove and basins of hot, steaming cafc-au- 
lait on the table. If we returned from duty drip- 
ping wet through the rain, lines were hung across 
from wall to wall, and we knew that morning 
would find our muddy clothes warm and dry. The 
woman would count our number as we entered. 
One less than when we left! The missing man 
wore spectacles. She remembered him and all 
his mannerisms. He used to nurse her little baby 
boy, Gustave, and play games with the mite's 



Preparations for Loos 47 

toes. What had happened to him? He was 
killed by a shell, we told her. On the road to 
the trenches he was hit. Then a mist gathered 
in the woman's eyes, and two tears rolled down 
her cheeks. We drank our cafe-au-lait. 

"Combien, madam?" 

"Souvenir," was the reply through sobs, and 
we thanked her for the kindness. Upstairs we 
bundled into our room, and threw our equipment 
down on the clean wooden floor, lit a candle and 
undressed. All wet clothes were flung down- 
stairs, where the woman would hang them up to 
dry. Everything was the same here as when we 
left; save where the last regiment had, in a mo- 
ment of inspiration, chronicled its deeds in verse 
on the wall. Pryor, the lance-corporal, read the 
poem aloud to us : 

"Gentlemen, the Guards, 
When the brick fields they took 
The Germans took the hook 
And left the Gentlemen in charge." 

The soldiers who came and went voiced their 
griefs on this wall, but in latrine language and 
Rabelaisian humour. Here were three proverbs 
written in a shaky hand: 



48 The Great Push 

"The Army pays good money, but little of it." 

"In the Army you are sertin to receive what you get." 

"The wages of sin and a soldir is death." 

Under these was a couplet written by a fatal- 
ist: 

"I don't care if the Germans come, 
If I have an extra tot of rum." 

Names of men were scrawled everywhere on 
the wall, from roof to floor. Why have some 
men this desire to scrawl their names on every 
white surface they see, I often wonder? One of 
my mates, who wondered as I did, finally found 
expression in verse, which glared forth accus- 
ingly from the midst of the riot of names in the 
room : 

"A man's ambition must be small 
Who writes his name upon this wall, 
And well he does deserve his pay 
A measly, mucky bob a day." 

The woman never seemed to mind this scrib- 
bling on the wall ; in Les Brebis they have to put 
up with worse than this. The house of which I 
speak is the nearest inhabited one to the firing 
line. Half the houses in the street are blown 
down, and every ruin has its tragedy. The na- 
tives are gradually getting thinned out by the 



Preparations for Loos 49 

weapons of war. The people refuse to quit their 
homes. This woman has a sister in Nouex-les- 
Mines, a town five kilometres further away 
from the firing line, but she refused to go there. 
"The people of Nouex-les-Mines are no good," 
she told us. "I would not be where they are. 
Nobody can trust them." 

The history of L,es Brebis must, if written, 
be written in blood. The washerwoman who 
washed our shirts could tell stories of adventure 
that would eclipse tales of romance as the sun 
eclipses a brazier. Honesty and fortitude are 
the predominant traits of the Frenchwoman. 

Once I gave the washerwoman my cardigan 
jacket to wash, and immediately afterwards we 
were ordered off to the trenches. When we left 
the firing line we went back to Nouex-les-Mines. 
A month passed before the regiment got to Les 
Brebis again. The washerwoman called at my 
billet and brought back the cardigan jacket, also 
a franc piece which she had found in the pocket. 
On the day following the woman was washing 
her baby at a pump in the street and a shell blew 
her head off. Pieces of the child were picked up 
a hundred yards away. The washerwoman's 



50 The Great Push 

second husband (she had been married twice) 
was away at the war; all that remained in the 
household now was a daughter whom Pryor, with 
his nicknaming craze, dubbed "Mercedes." 

But here in Les Brebis, amidst death and deso- 
lation, wont and use held their sway. The cata- 
clysm of a continent had not changed the ways 
and manners of the villagers, they took things 
phlegmatically, with fatalistic calm. The chil- 
dren played in the gutters of the streets, lovers 
met beneath the stars and told the story of an- 
cient passion, the miser hoarded his money, the 
preacher spoke to his Sunday congregation, and 
the plate was handed round for the worshippers' 
sous, men and women died natural deaths, chil- 
dren were born, females chattered at the street 
pumps and circulated rumours about their neigh- 
bours. . . . All this when wagons of shells passed 
through the streets all day and big guns travelled 
up nearer the lines every night. Never had Les 
Brebis known such traffic. Horses, limbers and 
guns, guns, limbers and horses going and com- 
ing from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. 
From their emplacements in every spinney and 
every hollow in the fields the guns spoke earnestly 



Preparations for Loos 51 

and continuously. Never had guns voiced such a 
threat before. They were everywhere; could 
there be room for another in all the spaces of Les 
Brebis and our front line? It was impossible to 
believe it, but still they came up, monsters with a 
mysterious air of detachment perched on limbers 
with caterpillar wheels, little field guns that 
flashed metallic glints to the cafe lamps, squat 
trench howitzers on steel platforms impassive as 
toads. . . . 

The coming and passing was a grand poem, 
and the poem found expression in clanging and 
rattle in the streets of Les Brebis through the 
days and nights of August and September, 1915. 
For us, we worked in our little ways, dug ad- 
vanced trenches under shell fire in a field where 
four thousand dead Frenchmen were wasting to 
clay. These men had charged last winter and fell 
to maxim and rifle fire; over their bodies we were 
to charge presently and take Loos and the 
trenches behind. The London Irish were to cross 
the top in the first line of attack, so the rumour 
said. 

One evening, when dusk was settling in the 
streets, when ruined houses assumed fantastic 



52 The Great Push 

shapes, and spirits seemed to be lurking in the 
shattered piles, we went up the streets of Les 
Brebis on our way to the trenches. Over by the 
church of Les Brebis, the spire of which was 
sharply defined in the clear air, the shells were 
bursting and the smoke of the explosions curled 
above the red roofs of the houses. The enemy 
was bombarding the road ahead, and the wounded 
were being carried back to the dressing stations. 
We met many stretchers on the road. The 
church of Bully-Grenay had been hit, and a barn 
near the church had been blown in on top of a 
platoon of soldiers which occupied it. We had 
to pass the church. The whole battalion seemed 
to be very nervous, and a presentiment of some- 
thing evil seemed to fill the minds of the men. 
The mood was not of common occurrence, but 
this unaccountable depression permeates whole 
bodies of men at times. 

We marched in silence, hardly daring to 
breathe. Ahead, under a hurricane of shell, 
Bully-Grenay was withering to earth. The night 
itself was dark and subdued, not a breeze stirred 
in the poplars which lined the long, straight road. 
Now and again, when a star-shell flamed over 



Preparations for Loos 53 

the firing line, we caught a glimpse of Bully-Gre- 
nay, huddled and helpless, its houses battered, 
its church riven, its chimneys fractured and lacer- 
ated. We dreaded passing the church; the cob- 
bles on the roadway there were red with the 
blood of men. 

We got into the village, which was deserted 
even by the soldiery ; the civil population had left 
the place weeks ago. We reached the church, 
and there, arm in arm, we encountered a French 
soldier and a young girl. They took very little 
notice of us, they were deep in sweet confidences 
which only the young can exchange. The maiden 
was "Mercedes." The sight was good; it was 
as a tonic to us. A load seemed to have been 
lifted off our shoulders, and we experienced a 
light and airy sensation of heart. We reached 
•the trenches without mishap, and set about our 
work. The enemy spotted us digging a new sap, 
and he began to shell with more than usual 
vigour. We were rather unlucky, for four of 
our men were killed and nine or ten got wounded. 

Night after night we went up to the trenches 
and performed our various duties. Keeps and 
redoubts were strengthened and four machine 



54 The Great Push 

guns were placed where only one stood before. 
Always while we worked the artillery on both 
sides conducted a loud-voiced argument ; concus- 
sion shells played havoc with masonry, and shrap- 
nel shells flung their deadly freight on roads 
where the transports hurried, and where the long- 
eared mules sweated in the traces of the limbers 
of war. We spoke of the big work ahead, but 
up till the evening preceding Saturday, Septem- 
ber 25th, we were not aware of the part which 
we had to play in the forthcoming event. An 
hour before dusk our officer read instructions, 
and outlined the plan of the main attack, which 
would start at dawn on the following day, Sep- 
tember 25th, 191 5. 

In co-operation with an offensive movement 
by the 10th French Army on our right, the 1st 
and 4th Army Corps were to attack the enemy 
from a point opposite Bully-Grenay on the south 
to the La Bassee Canal on the north. We had 
dug the assembly trenches on our right opposite 
Bully-Grenay; that was to be the starting point 
for the 4th Corps — our Corps. Our Division, 
the 47th London, would lead the attack of the 



Preparations for Loos 55 

4th Army Corps, and the London Irish would 
be the first in the fight. Our objective was the 
second German trench which lay just in front of 
Loos village and a mile away from our own first 
line trench. Every movement of the operations 
had been carefully planned, and nothing was left 
to chance. Never had we as many guns as now, 
and these guns had been bombarding the enemy's 
positions almost incessantly for ten days. 
Smoke bombs would be used. The thick fumes 
resulting from their explosion between the lines 
would cover our advance. At five o'clock all 
our guns, great and small, would open up a heavy 
fire. Our aircraft had located most of the 
enemy's batteries, and our heavy guns would be 
trained on these until they put them out of ac- 
tion. Five minutes past six our guns would 
lengthen their range and shell the enemy's re- 
serves, and at the same moment our regiment 
would get clear of the trenches and advance in 
four lines in extended order with a second's in- 
terval between the lines. The advance must be 
made in silence at a steady pace. 

Stretcher bearers had to cross with their com- 



56 The Great Push 

panies; none of the attacking- party must deal 
with the men who fell out on the way across. A 
party would be detailed out to attend to the 
wounded who fell near the assembly trenches. 
. . . The attack had been planned with such in- 
telligent foresight that our casualties would be 
very few. The job before us was quite easy and 
simple. 

"What do you think of it?" I asked my mate, 
Bill Teake. "I think a bottle of champagne would 
be very nice." 

"Just what I thought myself," said Bill. "I 
see Dudley Pryor is off to the cafe already. I've 
no money. I'm pore as a mummy." 

"You got paid yesterday," I said with a laugh. 
"You get poor very quickly." 

An embarrassed smile fluttered around his lips. 

"A man gets pore 'cordin' to no rule," he re- 
plied. "Leastways, I do." 

"Well, I've got a lot of francs," I said. "We 
may as well spend it." 

"You're damned right," he answered. "Maybe 
we'll not 'ave a chance to " 

"It doesn't matter a damn whether " 



Preparations for Loos 57 

"The officer says it will be an easy job. I don't 

know the " 

He paused. We understood things half spoken. 

"Champagne?" I hinted. 

"Nothing like champagne," said Bill. 



CHAPTER IV 

BEFORE THE CHARGE 

Before I joined the Army 

I lived in Donegal, 
Where every night the Fairies, 

Would hold their carnival. 

But now I'm out in Flanders, 
Where men like wheat-ears fall, 

And it's Death and not the Fairies 
Who is holding carnival. 

I POKED my head through the upper window 
of our billet and looked down the street. 
An ominous calm brooded over the village, 
the trees which lined the streets stood immovable 
in the darkness, with lone shadows clinging to 
the trunks. On my right, across a little rise, was 
the firing line. In the near distance was the vil- 
lage of Bully-Grenay, roofless and tenantless, and 
further off was Philosophe, the hamlet with its 
dark-blue slag-heap bulking large against the ho- 
rizon. Souchez in the hills was as usual active; 
a heavy artillery engagement was in progress. 
White and lurid splashes of flame dabbed at the 

58 



Before the Charge 59 

sky, and the smoke, rising from the ground, paled 
in the higher air; but the breeze blowing away 
from me carried the tumult and thunder far 
from my ears. I looked on a conflict without 
sound; a furious fight seen but unheard. 

A coal-heap near the village stood, colossal 
and threatening; an engine shunted a long row 
of wagons along the railway line which fringed 
Les Brebis. In a pit by the mine a big gun be- 
gan to speak loudly, and the echo of its voice 
palpitated through the room and dislodged a tile 
from the roof. . . . My mind was suddenly per- 
meated by a feeling of proximity to the enemy. 
He whom we were going to attack at dawn 
seemed to be very close to me. I could almost 
feel his presence in the room. At dawn I might 
deprive him of life and he might deprive me of 
mine. Two beings give life to a man, but one 
can deprive him of it. Which is the greater 
mystery? Birth or death? They who are re- 
sponsible for the first may take pleasure, but 
who can glory in the second ? . . . To kill a man. 
... To feel for ever after the deed that you 
have deprived a fellow being of life! 

"We're beginning to strafe again," said Pryor, 



60 The Great Push 

coming to my side as a second reverberation 
shook the house. "It doesn't matter. I've got a 
bottle of champagne and a box of cigars." 

"I've got a bottle as well," I said. 

"There'll be a hell of a do to-morrow," said 
Pryor. 

"I suppose there will," I replied. "The officer 
said that our job will be quite an easy one." 

"H'm!" said Pryor. 

I looked down at the street and saw Bill Teake. 

"There's Bill down there," I remarked. "He's 
singing a song. Listen." 

" 'I like your smile, 
I like your style, 
I like your soft blue dreamy eyes ' " 



"There's passion in that voice," I said. "Has 
he fallen in love again?" 

A cork went plunk! from a bottle behind me, 
and Pryor from the shadows of the room an- 
swered, "Oh, yes! He's in love again; the girl 
next door is his fancy now." 

"Oh, so it seems," I said. "She's out at the 
pump now and Bill is edging up to her as quietly 
as if he were going to loot a chicken off its perch." 

Bill is a boy for the girls ; he finds a new love 



Before the Charge 61 

at every billet. His fresh flame was a squat 
stump of a Millet girl in short petticoats and 
stout sabots. Her eyes were a deep black, her 
teeth very white. She was a comfortable, good- 
natured girl, "a big 'andful of love," as he said 
himself, but she was not very good-looking. 

Bill sidled up to her side and fixed an earnest 
gaze on the water falling from the pump; then 
he nudged the girl in the hip with a playful hand 
and ran his fingers over the back of her neck. 

"Allez vous en !" she cried, but otherwise made 
no attempt to resist Bill's advances. 

"Allez voos ong yerself !" said Bill, and burst 
into song again. 

" 'She's the pretty little girl from Nowhere, 
Nowhere at all. 
She's the '" 

He was unable to resist the temptation any 
longer, and he clasped the girl round the waist 
and planted a kiss on her cheek. The maiden 
did not relish this familiarity. Stooping down 
she placed her hand in the pail, raised a handful 
of water and flung it in Bill's face. The Cock- 
ney retired crestfallen and spluttering, and a few 
minutes afterwards he entered the room. 



62 The Great Push 

"Yes, I think that there are no women on earth 
to equal them," said Pryor to me, deep in a pre- 
arranged conversation. "They have a grace of 
their own and a coyness which I admire. I don't 
think that any women are like the women of 
France." 

" 'Oo?" asked Bill Teake, sitting down on the 
floor. 

'Tat and I are talking about the French girls," 
said Pryor. "They're splendid." 

"H'm!" grunted Bill in a colourless voice. 

"Not much humbug about them," I remarked. 

"I prefer English gals," said Bill. "They can 
make a joke and take one. As for the French 
gals, ugh !" 

"But they're not all alike," I said. "Some may 
resent advances in the street, and show a temper 
when they're kissed over a pump." 

"The water from the Les Brebis pumps is very 
cold," said Pryor. 

We could not see Bill's face in the darkness, 
but we could almost feel our companion squirm. 

"'Ave yer got some champagne, Pryor?" he 
asked with studied indifference. "My f roat's like 
sandpaper." 



Before the Charge 63 

"Plenty of champagne, matey," said Pryor in 
a repentant voice. "We're all going to get drunk 
to-night. Are you?" 

"Course I am," said Bill. "It's very comfy to 
'ave a drop of champagne." 

"More comfy than a kiss even," said Pryor. 

As he spoke the door was shoved inwards and 
our corporal entered. For a moment he stood 
there without speaking, his long, lank form darkly 
outlined against the half light. 

"Well, corporal?" said Pryor interrogatively. 

"Why don't you light a candle?" asked the cor- 
poral. "I thought that we were going to get one 
another's addresses." 

"So we were," I said, as if just remembering a 
decision arrived at a few hours previously. But 
I had it in my mind all the time. 

Bill lit a candle and placed it on the floor while 
I covered up the window with a ground sheet. 
The window looked out on the firing line three 
kilometres away, and the light, if uncovered, 
might be seen by the enemy. I glanced down the 
street and saw boys in khaki strolling aimlessly 
about, their cigarettes glowing. . . . The star- 
shells rose in the sky out behind Bully-Grenay, 



64 The Great Push 

and again I had that feeling of the enemy's pres- 
ence which was mine a few moments before. 

Kore, another of our section, returned from a 
neighbouring cafe, a thoughtful look in his dark 
eyes and a certain irresolution in his movements. 
His delicate nostrils and pale lips quivered nerv- 
ously, betraying doubt and a little fear of the 
work ahead at dawn. Under his arm he carried 
a bottle of champagne which he placed on the 
floor beside the candle. Sighing a little, he lay 
down at full length on the floor, not before he 
brushed the dust aside with a newspaper. Kore 
was very neat and took great pride in his uniform, 
which fitted him like an eyelid. 

Felan and M 'Crone came in together, arm in 
arm. The latter was in a state of subdued excite- 
ment ; his whole body shook as if he were in fever ; 
when he spoke his voice was highly pitched and 
unnatural, a sign that he was under the strain 
of great nervous tension. Felan looked very 
much at ease, though now and again he fumbled 
with the pockets of his tunic, buttoning and un- 
buttoning the flaps and digging his hands into 
his pockets as if for something which was not 
there. He had no cause for alarm; he was the 



Before the Charge 65 

company cook and, according to regulations, 
would not cross in the charge. 

"Blimey! you're not 'arf a lucky dawg!" said 
Bill, glancing at Felan. "I wish I was the cook 
to-morrow." 

"I almost wish I was myself." 

"Wot dyer mean?" 

"Do you expect an Irishman is going to cook 
bully-beef when his regiment goes over the top?" 
asked Felan. "For shame !" 

We rose, all of us, shook him solemnly by the 
hand, and wished him luck. 

"Now, what about the addresses?" asked Kore. 
"It's time we wrote them down." 

"It's as well to get it over," I said, but no one 
stirred. We viewed the job with distrust. By 
doing it we reconciled ourselves to a dread in- 
evitable; the writing of these addresses seemed 
to be the only thing that stood between us and 
death. If we could only put it off for another 
little while. . . . 

"We'll 'ave a drink to 'elp us," said Bill, and a 
cork went plonk! The bottle was handed round, 
and each of us, except the corporal, drank in turn 



66 The Great Push 

until the bottle was emptied. The corporal was 
a teetotaller. 

"Now we'll begin," I said. The wine had given 

me strength. "If I'm killed write to and 

, tell them that my death was sudden — easy." 

"That's the thing to tell them," said the cor- 
poral. "It's always best to tell them at home 
that death was sudden and painless. It's not 
much of a consolation, but " 

He paused. 

"It's the only thing one can do," said Felan. 

"I've nobody to write to," said Pryor, when 

his turn came. "There's a Miss . But what 

the devil does it matter! I've nobody to write 
to, nobody that cares a damn what becomes of 
me," he concluded. "At least I'm not like Bill," 
he added. 

"And who will I write to for you, Bill?" I 
asked. 

Bill scratched his little white potato of a nose, 
puckered his lips, and became thoughtful. I sud- 
denly realised that Bill was very dear to me. 

"Not afraid, matey?" I asked. 

"Naw," he answered in a thoughtful voice. 



Before the Charge 67 

"A man has only to die once, anyhow," said 
Felan. 

''Greedy! 'Ow many times d'yer want ter 
die?" asked Bill. "But I s'pose if a man 'ad nine 
lives like a cat 'e wouldn't mind dyin' once." 

"But suppose," said Pryor. 

"S'pose," muttered Bill. "Well, if it 'as got 
to be it can't be 'elped. . . . I'm not goin' to give 
any address to anybody," he said. "I'm goin' to 
'ave a drink." 

We were all seated on the floor round the can- 
dle which was stuck in the neck of an empty cham- 
pagne bottle. The candle flickered faintly, and 
the light made feeble fight with the shadows in 
the corners. The room was full of the aromatic 
flavour of Turkish cigarettes and choice cigars, 
for money was spent that evening with the reck- 
lessness of men going out to die. Teake handed 
round a fresh bottle of champagne and I gulped 
down a mighty mouthful. My shadow, flung by 
the candle on the white wall, was a grotesque 
caricature, my nose stretched out like a beak, and 
a monstrous bottle was tilted on demoniac lips. 
Pryor pointed at it with his trigger finger, 
laughed, and rose to give a quotation from Omar, 



68 The Great Push 

forgot the quotation, and sat down again. Kore 
was giving his home address to the corporal, Bill's 
hand trembled as he raised a match to his cigar. 
Pryor was on his feet again, handsome Pryor, 
with a college education. 

"What does death matter?" he said. "It's as 
natural to die as it is to be born, and perhaps 
the former is the easier event of the two. We 
have no remembrance of birth and will carry no 
remembrance of death across the bourne from 
which there is no return. Do you know what 
Epictetus said about death, Bill?" 

"Wot regiment was 'e in?" asked Bill. 

"He has been dead for some eighteen hundred 
years." 

"Oh! blimey!" 

"Epictetus said, 'Where death is I am not, 
where death is not I am,' " Pryor continued. 
"Death will give us all a clean sheet. If the ser- 
geant who issues short rum rations dies on the 
field of honour (don't drink all the champagne, 
Bill) we'll talk of him when he's gone as a 
damned good fellow, but alive we've got to bor- 
row epithets from Bill's vocabulary of vitupera- 



Before the Charge 69 

tion to speak of the aforesaid non-commissioned 
abomination." 

"Is 'e callin' me names, Pat?" Bill asked me. 

I did not answer for the moment, for Bill was 
undergoing a strange transformation. His head 
was increasing in size, swelling up until it al- 
most filled the entire room. His little potato of 
a nose assumed fantastic dimensions. The other 
occupants of the room diminished in bulk and re- 
ceded into far distances. I tried to attract Pry- 
or's attention to the phenomenon, but the youth 
receding with the others was now balancing a 
champagne bottle on his nose, entirely oblivious 
of his surroundings. 

"Be quiet, Bill," I said, speaking with difficulty. 
"Hold your tongue !" 

I began to feel drowsy, but another mouthful 
of champagne renewed vitality in my body. With 
this feeling came a certain indifference towards 
the morrow. I must confess that up to now I 
had a vague distrust of my actions in the work 
ahead. My normal self revolted at the thought 
of the coming dawn; the experiences of my life 
had not prepared me for one day of savage and 
ruthless butchery. To-morrow I had to go forth 



70 The Great Push 

prepared to do much that I disliked. ... I had 
another sip of wine; we were at the last bottle 
now. 

Pryor looked out of the window, raising the 
blind so that little light shone out into the dark- 
ness. 

"A Scottish division are passing through the 
street, in silence, their kilts swinging," he said. 
"My God! it does look fine." He arranged the 
blind again and sat down. Bill was cutting a sul- 
tana cake in neat portions and handing them 
round. 

"Come, Felan, and sing a song," said M'Crone. 

"My voice is no good now," said Felan, but 
by his way of speaking, we knew that he would 
oblige. 

"Now, Felan, come along!" we chorused. 

Felan wiped his lips with the back of his hand, 
took a cigar between his fingers and thumb and 
put it out by rubbing the lighted end against his 
trousers. Then he placed the cigar behind his 
ear. 

"Well, what will I sing?" he asked. 

"Any damned thing," said Bill. 



Before the Charge 71 

" 'The Trumpeter/ and we'll all help," said 
Kore. 

Felan leant against the wall, thrust his head 
back, closed his eyes, stuck the thumb of his right 
hand into a buttonhole of his tunic and began 
his song. 

His voice, rather hoarse, but very pleasant, fal- 
tered a little at first, but was gradually perme- 
ated by a note of deepest feeling, and a strange, 
unwonted passion surged through the melody. 
Felan was pouring his soul into the song. A mo- 
ment ago the singer was one with us; now he 
gave himself up to the song, and the whole lonely 
romance of war, its pity and its pain, swept 
through the building and held us in its spell. 
Kore's mobile nostrils quivered. M'Crone shook 
as if with ague. We all listened, enraptured, our 
eyes shut as the singer's were, to the voice that 
quivered through the smoky room. I could not 
help feeling that Felan himself listened to his 
own song, as something which was no part of 
him, but which affected him strangely. 

"'Trumpeter, what are you sounding now? 
Is it the call I'm seeking?' 
'Lucky for you if you hear it all 
For my trumpet's but faintly speaking — 



72 The Great Push 

I'm calling 'em home. Come home ! Come home ! 
Tread light o'er the dead in the valley, 
Who are lying around 
Face down to the ground, 
And they can't hear ' " 

Felan broke down suddenly, and, coming across 
the floor, he entered the circle and sat down. 

'Twas too high for me," he muttered huskily. 
"My voice has gone to the dogs. . . . One 
time " 

Then he relapsed into silence. None of us 
spoke, but we were aware that Felan knew how 
much his song had moved us. 

"Have another drink," said Pryor suddenly, 
in a thick voice. ' 'Look not upon the wine when 
it is red,' " he quoted. "But there'll be something 
redder than wine to-morrow!" 

"I wish we fought wiv bladders on sticks; it 
would be more to my taste," said Bill Teake. 

"Ye're not having a drop at all, corporal," said 
M'Crone. "Have a sup; it's grand stuff." 

The corporal shook his head. He sat on the 
floor with his back against the wall, his hands 
under his thighs. He had a blunt nose with wide 
nostrils, and his grey, contemplative eyes kept 
roving slowly round the circle as if he were puz- 



Before the Charge 73 

zling over our fate in the charge to-morrow. 

"I don't drink," he said. "If I can't do without 
it now after keeping off it so long, I'm not much 
good." 

"Yer don't know wot's good for yer," said Bill, 
gazing regretfully at the last half-bottle. 
"There's nuffink like fizz. My ole man's a devil 
fer 'is suds; so'm I." 

The conversation became riotous, questions and 
replies got mixed and jumbled. "I suppose we'll 
get to the front trench anyhow ; maybe to the sec- 
ond. But we'll get flung back from that." "Wish 
we'd another bloomin' bottle of fizz." "S'pose 
our guns will not lift their range quick enough 
when we advance. We'll have any amount "of 
casualties with our own shells." "The sergeant 
says that our objective is the crucifix in Loos 
churchyard." "Imagine killing men right up to 
the foot of the Cross." . . . 

Our red-headed platoon sergeant appeared at 
the top of the stairs, his hair lurid in the candle 
light. 

"Enjoying yourselves, boys?" he asked, with 
paternal solicitude. The sergeant's heart was in 
his platoon. 



74 The Great Push 

" 'Avin' a bit of a frisky," said Bill. "Will yer 
'ave a drop?" 

"I don't mind," said the sergeant. He spoke 
almost in a whisper, and something seemed to be 
gripping at his throat. 

He put the bottle to his lips and paused for a 
moment. 

"Good luck to us all !" he said, and drank. 

"We're due to leave in fifteen minutes," he told 
us. "Be ready when you hear the whistle blown 
in the street. Have a smoke now, for no pipes 
or cigarettes are to be lit on the march." 

He paused for a moment, then, wiping his 
moustache with the back of his hand, he clattered 
downstairs. 

The night was calm and full of enchantment. 
The sky hung low and was covered with a grey- 
ish haze. We marched past Les Brebis Church 
up a long street where most of the houses were 
levelled to the ground. Ahead the star-shells ri- 
oted in a blaze of colour, and a few rifles were 
snapping viciously out by Hohenzollern Redoubt, 
and a building on fire flared lurid against the east- 
ern sky. Apart from that silence and suspense, 
the world waited breathlessly for some great 



Before the Charge 75 

event. The big guns lurked on their emplace- 
ments, and now and again we passed a dark-blue 
muzzle peeping out from its cover, sentinel, as 
it seemed, over the neatly piled stack of shells 
which would furnish it with its feed at dawn. 

At the fringe of Bully-Grenay we left the road 
and followed a straggling path across the level 
fields where telephone wires had fallen down and 
lay in wait to trip unwary feet. Always the whis- 
pers were coming down the line: "Mind the 
wires !" "Mind the shell-holes !" "Gunpit on the 
left. Keep clear." "Mind the dead mule on the 
right," etc. 

Again we got to the road where it runs into 
the village of Maroc. A church stood at the 
entrance and it was in a wonderful state of pres- 
ervation. Just as we halted for a moment on the 
roadway the enemy sent a solitary shell across 
which struck the steeple squarely, turning it 
round, but failing to overthrow it. 

"A damned good shot," said Pryor approv- 
ingly. 



CHAPTER V 

OVER THE TOP 

Was it only yesterday 
Lusty comrades marched away? 
Now they're covered up with clay. 
Hearty comrades these have been, 
But no more will they be seen 
Drinking wine at Nouex-les-Mines. 

A BRAZIER glowed on the floor of the 
trench and I saw fantastic figures in the 
red blaze; the interior of a vast church 
lit up with a myriad candles, and dark figures 
kneeling in prayer in front of their plaster saints. 
The edifice was an enchanted Fairyland, a poem 
of striking contrasts in light and shade. I peered 
over the top. The air blazed with star-shells, and 
Loos in front stood out like a splendid dawn. 
A row of impassive faces, sleep-heavy they 
looked, lined our parapet ; bayonets, silver-spired, 
stood up over the sandbags; the dark bays, the 
recessed dug-outs with their khaki-clad occupants 
dimly defined in the light of little candles took 

on fantastic shapes. From the North Sea to the 

76 



Over the Top 77 

Alps stretched a line of men who could, if they so 
desired, clasp one another's hands all the way 
along. A joke which makes men laugh at Ypres 
at dawn may be told on sentry-go at Souchez by 
dusk, and the laugh which accompanies it ripples 
through the long, deep trenches of Cuinchy, the 
breastworks of Richebourg and the chalk alleys 
of Vermelles until it breaks itself like a summer 
wave against the traverse where England ends 
and France begins. 

Many of our men were asleep, and maybe 
dreaming. What were their dreams? ... I 
could hear faint, indescribable rustlings as the 
winds loitered across the levels in front; a light 
shrapnel shell burst, and its smoke quivered in 
the radiant light of the star-shells. Showers and 
sparks fell from high up and died away as they 
fell. Like lives of men, I thought, and again that 
feeling of proximity to the enemy surged through 
me. 

A boy came along the trench carrying a foot- 
ball under his arm. "What are you going to do 
with that?" I asked. 

"It's some idea, this," he said with a laugh. 



78 The Great Push 

"We're going to kick it across into the German 
trench." 

"It is some idea," I said. "What are our 
chances of victory in the game?" 

"The playing will tell," he answered enigmati- 
cally. "It's about four o'clock now," he added, 
paused and became thoughtful. The mention of 
the hour suggested something to him. . . . 

I could now hear the scattered crackling of 
guns as they called to one another saying: "It's 
time to be up and doing!" The brazen monsters 
of many a secret emplacement were registering 
their range, rivalry in their voices. For a little 
the cock-crowing of artillery went on, then sud- 
denly a thousand roosts became alive and voluble, 
each losing its own particular sound as all united 
in one grand concert of fury. The orchestra of 
war swelled in an incessant fanfare of dizzy har- 
mony. Floating, stuttering, whistling, screaming 
and thundering the clamorous voices belched into 
a rich gamut of passion which shook the grey 
heavens. The sharp, zigzagging sounds of high 
velocity shells cut through the pandemonium like 
forked lightning, and far away, as it seemed, 
sounding like a distant breakwater the big mis- 



Over the Top 79 

siles from caterpillar howitzers lumbered through 
the higher deeps of the sky. The brazen lips of 
death cajoled, threatened, whispered, whistled, 
laughed and sung: here were the sinister and sul- 
len voices of destruction, the sublime and stupen- 
dous paean of power intermixed in sonorous 
clamour and magnificent vibration. 

Felan came out into the trench. He had been 
asleep in his dug-out. "I can't make tea now," 
he said, fumbling with his mess-tin. "We'll soon 
have to get over the top. Murdagh, Nobby Byrne 
and Corporal Clancy are here," he remarked. 

"They are in hospital," I said. 

"They were," said Felan; "but the hospitals 
have been cleared out to make room for men 
wounded in the charge. The three boys were 
ordered to go further back to be out of the way, 
but they asked to be allowed to join in the charge, 
and they are here now." 1 

He paused for a moment. "Good luck to you, 
Pat," he said with a strange catch in his voice. 
"I hope you get through all right." 

A heavy rifle fire was opened by the Germans 
and the bullets snapped viciously at our sand- 
bags. Such little things bullets seemed in the 



8o The Great Push 

midst of all the pandemonium ! But bigger stuff 
was coming. Twenty yards away a shell dropped 
on a dug-out and sandbags and occupants whirled 
up in mid-air. The call for stretcher-bearers 
came to my bay, and I rushed round the traverse 
towards the spot where help was required accom- 
panied by two others. A shrapnel shell burst 
overhead and the man in front of me fell. I 
bent to lift him, but he stumbled to his feet. The 
concussion had knocked him down ; he was little 
the worse for his accident, but he felt a bit 
shaken. The other stretcher-bearer was bleed- 
ing at the cheek and temple, and I took him back 
to a sound dug-out and dressed his wound. He 
was in great pain, but very brave, and when 
another stricken boy came in he set about dress- 
ing him. I went outside into the trench. A per- 
fect hurricane of shells was coming across, con- 
cussion shells that whirled the sandbags broad- 
cast and shrapnel that burst high in air and shot 
their freight to earth with resistless precipitancy; 
bombs whirled in air and burst when they found 
earth with an ear-splitting clatter. "Out in the 
open!" I muttered and tried not to think too 



Over the Top 81 

clearly of what would happen when we got out 
there. 

It was now grey day, hazy and moist, and 
the thick clouds of pale yellow smoke curled high 
in space and curtained the dawn off from the 
scene of war. The word was passed along. 
"London Irish lead on to assembly trench." 
The assembly trench was in front, and there the 
scaling ladders were placed against the parapet, 
ready steps to death, as someone remarked. I 
had a view of the men swarming up the ladders 
when I got there, their bayonets held in steady 
hands, and at a little distance off a football swing- 
ing by its whang from a bayonet standard. 

The company were soon out in the open march- 
ing forward. The enemy's guns were busy, and 
the rifle and maxim bullets ripped the sandbags. 
The infantry fire was wild but of slight intensity. 
The enemy could not see the attacking party. 
But, judging by the row, it was hard to think that 
men could weather the leaden storm in the open. 

The big guns were not so vehement now, our 
artillery had no doubt played havoc with the hos- 
tile batteries. ... I went to the foot of a ladder 
and got hold of a rung. A soldier in front was 



82 The Great Push 

clambering across. Suddenly he dropped back- 
wards and bore me to the ground; the bullet 
caught him in the forehead. I got to my feet to 
find a stranger in grey uniform coming down the 
ladder. He reached the floor of the trench, put 
up his hands when I looked at him and cried in 
a weak, imploring voice, "Kamerad! Kamerad!" 

"A German!" I said to my mate. 

"H'm! h'm!" he answered. 

I flung my stretcher over the parapet, and, fol- 
lowed by my comrade stretcher-bearer, I clam- 
bered up the ladder and went over the top. 



CHAPTER VI 

ACROSS THE OPEN 

"The firefly lamps were lighted yet, 
As we crossed the top of the parapet, 
But the East grew pale to another fire, 
As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman's wire. 
And the Eastern sky was gold and grey, 
And under our feet the dead men lay, 
As we entered Loos in the morning." 

THE moment had come when it was un- 
wise to think. The country round Loos 
was like a sponge; the god of war had 
stamped with his foot on it, and thousands of 
men, armed, ready to kill, were squirted out on 
to the level, barren fields of danger. To dwell 
for a moment on the novel position of being 
standing where a thousand deaths swept by, mis- 
sing you by a mere hair's breadth, would be sheer 
folly. There on the open field of death my life 
was out of my keeping, but the sensation of fear 
never entered my being. There was so much 
simplicity and so little effort in doing what I 

had done, in doing what eight hundred comrades 

83 



84 The Great Push 

had done, that I felt I could carry through the 
work before me with as much credit as my code 
of self respect required. The maxims went 
crackle like dry brushwood under the feet of a 
marching host. A bullet passed very close to my 
face like a sharp, sudden breath ; a second hit the 
ground in front, flicked up a little shower of dust, 
and ricochetted to the left, hitting the earth many 
times before it found a resting place. The air 
was vicious with bullets; a million invisible birds 
flicked their wings very close to my face. Ahead 
the clouds of smoke, sluggish low-lying fog, and 
fumes of bursting shells, thick in volume, receded 
towards the German trenches, and formed a strik- 
ing background for the soldiers who were march- 
ing up a low slope towards the enemy's parapet, 
which the smoke still hid from view. There was 
no haste in the forward move, every step was 
taken with regimental precision, and twice on the 
way across the Irish boys halted for a moment 
to correct their alignment. Only at a point on 
the right there was some confusion and a little 
irregularity. Were the men wavering? No fear! 
The boys on the right were dribbling the elusive 
football towards the German trench. 



Across the Open 85 

Raising the stretcher, my mate and I went for- 
ward. For the next few minutes I was conscious 
of many things. A slight rain was falling; the 
smoke and fumes I saw had drifted back, expos- 
ing a dark streak on the field of green, the 
enemy's trench. A little distance away from me 
three men hurried forward, and two of them 
carried a box of rifle ammunition. One of the 
bearers fell flat to earth, his two mates halted 
for a moment, looked at the stricken boy, and 
seemed to puzzle at something. Then they caught 
hold of the box hangers and rushed forward. 
The man on the ground raised himself on his 
elbow and looked after his mates ; then sank down 
again to the wet ground. Another soldier came 
crawling towards us on his belly, looking for all 
the world like a gigantic lobster which had es- 
caped from its basket. His lower lip was cut 
clean to the chin and hanging apart; blood welled 
through the muddy khaki trousers where they 
covered the hips. 

I recognised the fellow. 

''Much hurt, matey?" I asked. 

"I'll manage to get in," he said. 

"Shall I put a dressing on?" I inquired. 



86 The Great Push 

"I'll manage to get into our own trench," he 
stammered, spitting the blood from his lips. 

"There are others out at the wires. S has 

caught it bad. Try and get him in, Pat." 

"Right, old man," I said, as he crawled off. 
"Good luck." 

My cap was blown off my head as if by a vio- 
lent gust of wind, and it dropped on the ground. 
I put it on again, and at that moment a shell 
burst near at hand and a dozen splinters sung 
by my ear. I walked forward with a steady step. 

"What took my cap off?" I asked myself. "It 
went away just as if it was caught in a breeze. 
God!" I muttered, in a burst of realisation, "it 
was that shell passing." I breathed very deeply, 
my blood rushed down to my toes and an airy 
sensation filled my body. Then the stretcher 
dragged. 

"Lift the damned thing up," I called to my 
mate over my shoulder. There was no reply. I 
looked round to find him gone, either mixed up 
in a whooping rush of kilted Highlanders, who 
had lost their objective and were now charging 
parallel to their own trench, or perhaps he got 
killed. . . . How strange that the Highlanders 



Across the Open 87 

could not charge in silence, I thought, and then 
recollected that most of my boyhood friends, 
Donegal lads, were in Scottish regiments. ... I 
placed my stretcher on my shoulder, walked for- 
ward towards a bank of smoke which seemed to 
be standing stationary, and came across our pla- 
toon sergeant and part of his company. 

"Are we going wrong, or are the Jocks 
wrong?" he asked his men, then shouted, "Lie 
flat, boys, for a minute, until we see where we 
are. There's a big crucifix in Loos churchyard, 
and we've got to draw on that." 

The men threw themselves flat; the sergeant 
went down on one knee and leant forward on his 
rifle, his hands on the bayonet standard, the fin- 
gers pointing upwards and the palms pressed 
close to the sword which was covered with rust. 
. . . How hard it would be to draw it from a 
dead body! . . . The sergeant seemed to be 
kneeling in prayer. . . , In front the cloud 
cleared away, and the black crucifix standing 
over the graves of Loos became revealed. 

"Advance, boys!" said the sergeant. "Steady 
on to the foot of the Cross and rip the swine out 
of their trenches." 



88 The Great Push 

The Irish went forward. . . . 

A boy sat on the ground bleeding at the shoul- 
der and knee. 

"You've got hit," I said. 

"In a few places," he answered, in a very mat- 
ter-of-fact voice. "I want to get into a shell- 
hole." 

"I'll try and get you into one," I said. "But 
I want someone to help me. Hi ! you there ! Come 
and give me a hand." 

I spoke to a man who sat on the rim of a 
crater near at hand. His eyes, set close in a 
white, ghastly face, stared tensely at me. He sat 
in a crouching position, his head thrust forward, 
his right hand gripping tightly at a mud-stained 
rifle. Presumably he was a bit shaken and was 
afraid to advance further. 

"Help me to get this fellow into a shell-hole," 
I called. "He can't move." 

There was no answer. 

"Come along," I cried, and then it was sud- 
denly borne to me that the man was dead. I 
dragged the wounded boy into the crater and 
dressed his wounds. 



Across the Open 89 

A shell struck the ground in front, burrowed, 
and failed to explode. 

"Thank Heaven!" I muttered, and hurried 
ahead. Men and pieces of men were lying all 
over the place. A leg, an arm, then again a leg, 
cut off at the hip. A finely formed leg, the latter, 
gracefully putteed. A dummy leg in a tailor's 
window could not be more graceful. It might be 
X ; he was an artist in dress, a Beau Brummel in 
khaki. Fifty yards further along I found the 
rest of X. . . . 

The harrowing sight was repellent, antagonis- 
tic to my mind. The tortured things lying at 
my feet were symbols of insecurity, ominous re- 
minders of danger from which no discretion 
could save a man. My soul was barren of pity; 
fear went down into the innermost parts of me, 
fear for myself. The dead and dying lay all 
around me; I felt a vague obligation to the lat- 
ter; they must be carried out. But why should 
I trouble! Where could I begin? Everything 
was so far apart. I was too puny to start my 
labours in such a derelict world. The difficulty 
of accommodating myself to an old task under 
new conditions was enormous. 



90 The Great Push 

A figure in grey, a massive block of Bavarian 
bone and muscle, came running towards me, his 
arms in air, and Bill Teake following him with a 
long bayonet. 

"A prisoner!" yelled the boy on seeing me. 
" 'Kamerad! Kamerad!' 'e shouted when I came 
up. Blimey! I couldn't stab 'im, so I took 'im 
prisoner. It's not 'arf a barney! . . . 'Ave yer 
got a fag ter spare?" 

The Cockney came to a halt, reached for a 
cigarette, and lit it. 

The German stood still, panting like a dog. 

''Double ! Fritz, double !" shouted the boy, send- 
ing a little puff of smoke through his nose. "Over 
to our trench you go! Grease along if yer don't 
want a bayonet in your !" 

They rushed off, the German with hands in air, 
and Bill behind with his bayonet perilously close 
to the prisoner. There was something amus- 
ing in the incident, and I could not refrain from 
laughing. Then I got a whiff from a German 
gas-bomb which exploded near me, and I began 
spluttering and coughing. The irritation, only 
momentary, was succeeded by a strange humour. 
I felt as if walking on air, my head got light, 



Across the Open 91 

and it was with difficulty that I kept my feet on 
earth. It would be so easy to rise into space and 
float away. The sensation was a delightful one; 
I felt so pleased with myself, with everything. 
A wounded man lay on the ground, clawing the 
earth with frenzied fingers. In a vague way, I 
remembered some ancient law which ordained me 
to assist a stricken man. But I could not do so 
now, the action would clog my buoyancy and that 
delightful feeling of freedom which permeated 
my being. Another soldier whom I recognised, 
even at a distance, by his pink-and-white bald 
pate, so often a subject for our jokes, reeled over 
the blood-stained earth, his eyes almost bursting 
from their sockets. 

"You look bad," I said to him with a smile. 

He stared at me drunkenly, but did not an- 
swer. 

A man, mother-naked, raced round in a circle, 
laughing boisterously. The rags that would class 
him as a friend or foe were gone, and I could 
not tell whether he was an Englishman or a 
German. As I watched him an impartial bullet 
went through his forehead, and he fell headlong 



92 The Great Push 

to the earth. The sight sobered me and I re- 
gained my normal self. 

Up near the German wire I found our Com- 
pany postman sitting in a shell-hole, a bullet in 
his leg below the knee, and an unlighted cigarette 
in his mouth. 

"You're the man I want," he shouted, on seeing 
me. And I fumbled in my haversack for band- 
ages. 

"No dressing for me, yet," he said with a smile. 
"There are others needing help more than I. 
What I want is a match." 

As I handed him my match box a big high ex- 
plosive shell flew over our heads and dropped 
fifty yards away in a little hollow where seven 
or eight figures in khaki lay prostrate, faces to 
the ground. The shell burst and the wounded 
and dead rose slowly into air to a height of six 
or seven yards and dropped slowly again, look- 
ing for all the world like puppets worked by 
wires. 

"This," said the postman, who had observed 
the incident, "is a solution of a question which 
diplomacy could not settle, I suppose. The last 
argument of kings is a damned sorry business." 



Across the Open 93 

By the German barbed wire entanglements 
were the shambles of war. Here our men were 
seen by the enemy for the first time that morn- 
ing. Up till then the foe had fired erratically 
through the oncoming curtain of smoke; but 
when the cloud cleared away, the attackers were 
seen advancing, picking their way through the 
wires which had been cut to little pieces by our 
bombardment. The Irish were now met with har- 
rying rifle fire, deadly petrol bombs and hand 
grenades. Here I came across dead, dying and 
sorely wounded; lives maimed and finished, and 
all the romance and roving that makes up the life 
of a soldier gone for ever. Here, too, I saw, 
bullet-riddled, against one of the spider webs 
known as chevaux de frise, a limp lump of pliable 
leather, the football which the boys had kicked 
across the field. 

I came across Flannery lying close to a barbed 
wire support, one arm round it as if in embrace. 
He was a clumsily built fellow, with queer bushy 
eyebrows and a short, squat nose. His bearing 
was never soldierly, but on a march he could bear 
any burden and stick the job when more alert 
men fell out. He always bore himself however 



94 The Great Push 

with a certain grace, due, perhaps, to a placid 
belief in his own strength. He never made 
friends ; a being apart, he led a solitary life. Now 
he lay close to earth hugging an entanglement 
prop, and dying. 

There was something savage in the expression 
of his face as he looked slowly round, like an ox 
under a yoke, on my approach. I knelt down be- 
side him and cut his tunic with my scissors where 
a burnt hole clotted with blood showed under the 
kidney. A splinter of shell had torn part of the 
man's side away. All hope was lost for the poor 
soul. 

"In much pain, chummy?" I asked. 

"Ah, Christ! yes, Pat," he answered. "Wife 
and two kiddies, too. Are we getting the best 
of it?" 

I did not know how the fight was progressing, 
but I had seen a line of bayonets drawing near to 
the second trench out by Loos. 

"Winning all along," I answered. 

"That's good," he said. "Is there any hope 
for me?" 

"Of course there is, matey," I lied. "You have 
two of these morphia tablets and lie quiet. We'll 



Across the Open 95 

take you in after a while, and you'll be back in 
England in two or three days' time." 

I placed the morphia under his tongue and 
he closed his eyes as if going to sleep. Then, 
with an effort, he tried to get up and gripped the 
wire support with such vigour that it came clean 
out of the ground. His legs shot out from under 
him, and, muttering something about rations be- 
ing fit for pigs and not for men, he fell back and 
died. 

The fighting was not over in the front trench 
yet, the first two companies had gone ahead, the 
other two companies were taking possession here. 
A sturdy Bavarian in shirt and pants was stand- 
ing on a banquette with his bayonet over the 
parapet, and a determined look in his eyes. He 
had already done for two of our men as they 
tried to cross, but now his rifle seemed to be un- 
loaded and he waited. Standing there amidst 
his dead countrymen he formed a striking figure. 
A bullet from one of our rifles would have ended 
his career speedily, but no one seemed to want 
to fire that shot. There was a moment of sus- 
pense, broken only when the monstrous futility 
of resistance became apparent to him, and he 



96 The Great Push 

threw down his rifle and put up his hands, shout- 
ing "Kamerad! kamerad!" I don't know what 
became of him afterwards, other events claimed 
my attention. 

Four boys rushed up, panting under the ma- 
chine gun and ammunition belts which they car- 
ried. One got hit and fell to the ground, the 
maxim tripod which he carried fell on top of him. 
The remainder of the party came to a halt. 

"Lift the tripod and come along," his mates 
shouted to one another. 

"Who's goin' to carry it?" asked a little fellow 
with a box of ammunition. 

"You," came the answer. 

"Some other one must carry it," said the little 
fellow. "I've the heaviest burden." 

"You've not," one answered. "Get the blurry 
thing on your shoulder." 

"Blurry yourself!" said the little fellow. 
"Someone else carry the thing. Marney can 
carry it." 

"I'm not a damned fool!" said Marney. "It 
can stick there 'fore I take it across." 

"Not much good goin' over without it," said 
the little fellow. 



Across the Open 97 

I left them there wrangling: the extra weight 
would have made no appreciable difference to 
any of them. 

It was interesting to see how the events of the 
morning had changed the nature of the boys. 
Mild-mannered youths who had spent their work- 
ing hours of civil life in scratching with inky 
pens on white paper, and their hours of relaxa- 
tion in cutting capers on roller skates and helping 
dainty maidens to teas and ices, became possessed 
of mad Berserker rage and ungovernable fury. 
Now that their work was war the bloodstained 
bayonet gave them play in which they seemed to 
glory. 

"Here's one that I've just done in," I heard 
M'Crone shout, looking approvingly at a dead 
German. "That's five of the bloody swine now." 

M'Crone's mother never sends her son any 
money lest he gets into the evil habit of smoking 
cigarettes. He is of a religious turn of mind and 
delights in singing hymns, his favourite being, 
"There is a green hill far away." I never heard 
him swear before, but at Loos his language 
would make a navvy in a Saturday night taproom 
green with envy. M'Crone was not lacking in 



98 The Great Push 

courage. I have seen him wait for death with 
untroubled front in a shell-harried trench, and 
now, inflicting pain on others, he was a fiend per- 
sonified; such transformations are of common oc- 
currence on the field of honour. 

The German trench had suffered severely 
from our fire; parapets were blown in, and at 
places the trench was full to the level of the 
ground with sandbags and earth. Wreckage was 
strewn all over the place, rifles, twisted distor- 
tions of shapeless metal, caught by high-velocity 
shells, machine guns smashed to atoms, bomb- 
proof shelters broken to pieces like houses of 
cards; giants had been at work of destruction in 
a delicately fashioned nursery. 

On the reverse slope of the parapet broken tins, 
rusty swords, muddy equipments, wicked-looking 
coils of barbed wire, and discarded articles of 
clothing were scattered about pell-mell. I noticed 
an unexploded shell perched on a sandbag, cock- 
ing a perky nose in air, and beside it was a bat- 
tered helmet, the brass glory of its regal eagle 
dimmed with trench mud and wrecked with many 
a bullet. . . . 

I had a clear personal impression of man's 



Across the Open 99 

ingenuity for destruction when my eyes looked 
on the German front line where our dead lay in 
peace with their fallen enemies on the parapet. 
At the bottom of the trench the dead lay thick, 
and our boys, engaged in building a new parapet, 
were heaping the sandbags on the dead men and 
consolidating the captured position. 




CHAPTER VII 

GERMANS AT LOOS 

"Some'ow a dyin' Alleymong don't seem a real Alleymong; 
you ain't able to 'ate 'im as you ought." — Bill Teake's 
Philosophy. 

ROM the day I left England up till the 
dawn of September 25th I never met a 
German, and I had spent seven months in 
France. At night when out on working-parties 
I saw figures moving out by the enemy trenches, 
mere shadows that came into view when an 
ephemeral constellation of star-shells held the 
heavens. We never fired at these shadows, and 
they never fired at us; it is unwise to break the 
tacit truces of the trenches. The first real live 
German I saw was the one who blundered down 
the ladder into 'our trench, the second raced to- 
wards our trenches with Bill Teake following at 
his heels, uttering threats and vowing that he 
would stab the prisoner if he did not double in 
a manner approved of by the most exacting ser- 
geant-major. 

100 



Germans at Loos 101 

Of those who are England's enemies I know, 
even now, very little. I cannot well pass judg- 
ment on a nation through seeing distorted lumps 
of clotting and mangled flesh pounded into the 
muddy floor of a trench, or strewn broadcast on 
the reverse slopes of a shell-scarred parapet. The 
enemy suffered as we did, yelled with pain when 
his wounds prompted him, forgot perhaps in the 
insane combat some of the nicer tenets of chivalry. 
After all, war is an approved licence for broth- 
erly mutilation, its aims are sanctioned, only the 
means towards its end are disputed. It is a sad 
and sorry business from start to finish, from 
diplomacy that begets it to the Te Deums that 
rise to God in thanksgiving for victory obtained. 

In the first German trench there were dozens 
of dead, the trench was literally piled with life- 
less bodies in ugly grey uniforms. Curiosity 
prompted me to look into the famous German 
dug-outs. They were remarkable constructions, 
caves leading into the bowels of the earth, some 
of them capable of holding a whole platoon of 
soldiers. These big dug-outs had stairs leading 
down to the main chamber and steps leading out. 
In one I counted forty-seven steps leading down 



102 The Great Push 

from the floor of the trench to the roof of the 
shelter. No shell made was capable of piercing 
these constructions, but a bomb flung down- 
stairs. . . . 

I looked into a pretentious dug-out as I was 
going along the trench. This one, the floor of 
which was barely two feet below the level of 
the trench floor, must have been an officer's. It 
was sumptuously furnished, a curtained bed with 
a white coverlet stood in one corner. Near the 
door was a stove and a scuttle of coal. In an- 
other corner stood a table, and on it was a half 
bottle of wine, three glasses, a box of cigars, and 
a vase of flowers. These things I noticed later; 
what I saw first on entering was a wounded Ger- 
man lying across the bed, his head against the 
wall and his feet on the floor. His right arm was 
almost severed at the shoulder. 

I entered and gazed at him. There was a 
look of mute appeal in his eyes, and for some 
reason I felt ashamed of myself for having in- 
truded on the privacy of a dying man. There 
come times when a man on the field of battle 
should be left alone to his own thoughts. I un- 
loosened my water-bottle from its holder and 



Germans at Loos 103 

by sign inquired if he wanted a drink. He 
nodded, and I placed the bottle to his lips. 

"Sprechen Anglais?" I inquired, and he shook 
his head. 

I took my bottle of morphia tablets from my 
pocket and explained to him as well as I was 
able what the bottle contained, and he permitted 
me to place two under his tongue. When rum- 
maging in my pocket I happened to bring out 
my rosary beads and he noticed them. He spoke 
and I guessed that he was inquiring if I was a 
Catholic. 

I nodded assent. 

He fumbled with his left hand in his tunic 
pocket and brought out a little mudstained book- 
let and handed it to me. I noticed that the 
volume was a prayer-book. By his signs I con- 
cluded that he wanted me to keep it. 

I turned to leave, but he called me back and 
pointed to his trousers pocket as if he wanted 
me to bring something out of it. I put in my 
hand and drew out a little leather packet from 
which the muzzle of a revolver peeped forth. 
This I put in my pocket. He feared that if some 
of our men found this in his possession his life 



104 The Great Push 

might be a few hours shorter than it really would 
be if he were left to die in peace. I could see 
that he required me to do something further for 
him. Raising his left hand with difficult (I now 
saw that blood was flowing down the wrist) he 
pointed at his tunic pocket, and I put my hand 
in there. A clasp-knife, a few buttons, a piece 
of string and a photo were all that the pocket 
contained. The photograph showed a man, 
whom I saw was the soldier, a woman and a 
little child seated at a table. I put it in his hand, 
and with brilliant eyes and set teeth he raised his 
head to look at it. . . . 

I went outside. M'Crone was coming along 
the trench with a bomb in his hand. 

"Any of them in that dug-out?" he asked me. 

"One," I replied. 

"Then I'll give him this," M'Crone shouted. 
His gestures were violent, and his indifference 
to personal danger as shown in his loud laughter 
was somewhat exaggerated. As long as he had 
something to do he was all right, but a moment's 
thought would crumple him up like a wet rag. 

"I've done in seven of them already," he 
shouted. 



Germans at Loos 105 

''The one in here is dying," I said. "Leave him 
alone." 

M'Crone went to the dug-out door, looked curi- 
ously in, then walked away. 

Behind the German trench I found one of 
our boys slowly recovering from an attack of 
gas. Beside him lay a revolver, a mere toy of 
a thing, and touching him was a German with 
a bullet in his temple. The boy told me an in- 
teresting story as I propped him up in a sitting 
position against a couple of discarded equip- 
ments. 

''I tripped up, and over I went," he said. "I 
came to slowly, and was conscious of many 
things 'fore I had the power to move my hands 
or feet. What do you think was happenin'? 
There was a bloomin' German sniper under cover 
pottin' at our boys, and that cover was a bundle 
of warm, livin' flesh ; the blighter's cover was me ! 
'If I get my hand in my pocket,' I says to myself, 
'I'll get my revolver and blow the beggar's brains 
out.' " 

"Blow out his brains with that!" I said, look- 
ing at the weapon. "You might as well try to 
blow out his brains with a pinch of snuff!" 



io6 The Great Push 

"That's all you know!" said the boy. "Any- 
way, I got my hand into my pocket, it crawled in 
like a snake, and I got the little pet out. And 
the German was pot-pottin' all the time. Then 
I fetched the weapon up, stuck the muzzle plunk 
against the man's head and pulled the trigger 
twice. He didn't half kick up a row. See if 
the two bullets have gone through one hole, Pat." 

"They have," I told him. 

"I knew it," he answered. "Ah! it's an easy 
job to kill a man. You just rush at him and you 
see his eyes and nothin' else. There's a mist 
over the trench. You shove your bayonet for- 
ward and its sticks in something soft and almost 
gets dragged out of your hands. Then you get 
annoyed because you can't pull it back easy. 
That's all that happens and you've killed a man. 
. . . How much water have you got?" 

A German youth of seventeen or eighteen with 
a magnificent helmet on his head and a red cross 
on his arm was working in the centre of a square 
formed by four of his dead countrymen, digging 
a grave. The sweat stood out on his forehead, 
and from time to time he cast an uneasy glance 
about him. 



Germans at Loos 107 

"What are you doing there?" I asked. 

"Digging a grave for these," he said, in good 
English, pointing a shaky finger at the prostrate 
figures. "I suppose I'll be put in it myself," he 
added. 

"Why?" I inquired. 

"Oh! you English shoot all prisoners." 

"You're a fool, Fritz," said M'Crone, ap- 
proaching him. "We're not going to do you any 
harm. Look, I've brought you something to eat." 

He handed the boy a piece of cake, but the 
young Bavarian shook his head. He was trem- 
bling with terror, and the shovel shook in his 
hands. Fifteen minutes later when I passed that 
way carrying in a wounded man, I saw M'Crone 
and the young Bavarian sitting on the brink of 
the grave smoking cigarettes and laughing heart- 
ily over some joke. 

Prisoners were going down towards M 

across the open. Prisoners are always taken 
across the open in bulk with as small an escort 
as possible. I saw a mob of two hundred go 
along, their hands in the air, and stern Tommies 
marching on flank and at rear. The party was a 
mixed one. Some of the prisoners were strong, 



io8 The Great Push 

sturdy youngsters of nineteen or twenty, others 
were old men, war-weary and dejected. A few 
were thin, weedy creatures, but others were mas- 
sive blocks of bone and muscle, well set-up and 
brimful of energy even in their degrading plight. 

Now and again queer assortments of these 
came along. One man was taken prisoner in 
a cellar on the outskirts of Loos. Our men dis- 
covered him asleep in a bed, pulled him out and 
found that he was enjoying a decent, civilised 

slumber. He came down to M as he was 

taken prisoner, his sole clothing being a pair of 
stockings, a shirt and an identity disc. Four big 
Highlanders, massive of shoulder and leg, es- 
corted a puny, spectacled youth along the rim of 
the trench, and following them came a diminu- 
tive Cockney with a massive helmet on his head, 
the sole escort for twelve gigantic Bavarian 
Grenadiers. The Cockney had now only one 
enemy, he was the man who offered to help him 
at his work. 

I came across a crumpled figure of a man in 
grey, dead in a shell-crater. One arm was bent 
under him, the other stretched forward almost 
touching a photograph of a woman and three 



Germans at Loos 109 

little children. I placed the photograph under 
the edge of the man's tunic. 

Near him lay another Bavarian, an old man, 
deeply wrinkled and white haired, and wounded 
through the chest. He was trembling all over 
like a wounded bird, but his eyes were calm and 
they looked beyond the tumult and turmoil of 
the battlefield into some secret world that only 
the dying can see. A rosary was in the man's 
hand and his lips were mumbling something: he 
was telling his beads. He took no notice of me. 
Across the level at this point came a large party 
of prisoners amidst a storm of shells. The Ger- 
man gunners had shortened their range and 
were now shelling the ground occupied by their 
troops an hour previous. Callous, indifferent de- 
struction! The oncoming prisoners were Ger- 
mans — as men they were of no use to us ; it would 
cost our country money and men to keep and 
feed them. They were Germans, but of no fur- 
ther use to Germany; they were her pawns in a 
game of war and now useless in the play. As 
if to illustrate this, a shell from a German gun 
dropped in the midst of the batch and pieces of 
the abject party whirled in air. The gun which 



no The Great Push 

had destroyed them had acted as their guardian 
for months. It was a frantic mother slaying her 
helpless brood. 

The stretcher-bearer sees all the horror of war 
written in blood and tears on the shell-riven bat- 
tlefield. The wounded man, thank heaven! has 
only his own pain to endure, although the most 
extreme agony which flesh is heir to is written 
large on the field of fight. 

Several times that day I asked myself the ques- 
tion, "Why are all soldiers not allowed to carry 
morphia?" How much pain it would save ! How 
many pangs of pain might morphia alleviate! 
How often would it give that rest and quiet 
which a man requires when an excited heart per- 
sists in pumping blood out through an open 
wound! In the East morphia is known as "The 
gift of God" ; on the field of battle the gift of God 
should not be denied to men in great pain. It 
would be well indeed if all soldiers were taught 
first aid before a sergeant-major teaches them the 
art of forming fours on the parade ground. 



How My Comrades Fared 113 

sandbags, a machine-gun emplacement and a 
maxim peeping furtively through the loophole. 
A big, bearded German was adjusting the range 
of the weapon. He looked at Felan, Felan looked 
at him and tightened his grip on his rifle. 

"You !" said Felan, and just made one 

step forward when something "hit him all over," 
as he said afterwards. He dropped out of the 
world of conscious things. 

A stretcher-bearer found him some twenty 
minutes later and placed him in a shell-hole, after 
removing his equipment, which he placed on the 
rim of the crater. 

Felan returned to a conscious life that was 
tense with agony. Pain gripped at the innermost 
parts of his being. "I cannot stand this," he 
yelled. "God Almighty, it's hell !" 

He felt as if somebody was shoving a red-hot 
bar of iron through his chest. Unable to move, 
he lay still, feeling the bar getting shoved further 
and further in. For a moment he had a glimpse 
of his rifle lying on the ground near him and he 
tried to reach it. But the unsuccessful effort 
cost him much, and he became unconscious again. 

A shell bursting near his hand shook him into 



H4 The Great Push 

reality, and splinters whizzed by his head. He 
raised himself upwards, hoping to get killed 
outright. He was unsuccessful. Again his eyes 
rested on his rifle. 

"If God would give me strength to get it into 
my hand," 'he muttered. "Lying here like a rat 
in a trap and I've seen nothing. Not a run for 
my money. ... I suppose all the boys are dead. 
Lucky fellows if they die easy. . . . I've seen 
nothing only one German, and he done for me. 
I wish the bullet had gone through my head." 

He looked at his equipment, at the bayonet 
scabbard lying limply under the haversack. The 
water-bottle hung over the rim of the shell-hole. 
"Full of rum, the bottle is, and I'm so dry. I 
wish I could get hold of it. I was a damned fool 
ever to join the Army. . . . My God! I wish I 
was dead," said Felan. 

The minutes passed by like a long grey thread 
unwinding itself slowly from some invisible ball, 
and the pain bit deeper into the boy. Vivid re- 
membrances of long-past events flashed across 
his mind and fled away like telegraph poles seen 
by passengers in an express train. Then he lost 
consciousness again. 



How My Comrades Fared 115 

About eleven o'clock in the morning I found a 
stretcher-bearer whose mate had been wounded, 
and he helped me to carry a wounded man intc 
our original front trench. On our way across I 
heard somebody calling "Pat! Pat!" I looked 
round and saw a man crawling in on his hands 
and knees, his head almost touching the ground. 
He called to me, but he did not look in my direc- 
tion. But I recognised the voice: the corporal 
was calling. I went across to him. 

"Wounded?" I asked. 

"Yes, Pat," he answered, and, turning, over, 
he sat down. His face was very white. 

"You should not have crawled in," I muttered. 
"It's only wearing you out; and it's not very 
healthy here." 

"Oh, I wanted to get away from this hell," 
he said. 

"It's very foolish," I replied. "Let me see 
your wound." 

I dressed the wound and gave the corporal two 
morphia tablets and put two blue crosses on his 
face. This would tell those who might come his 
way later that morphia had been given. 

"Lie down," I said. "When the man whom 



n6 The Great Push 

we're carrying is safely in, we'll come back for 
you." 

I left him. In the trench were many wounded 
lying on the floor and on the fire-steps. A soldier 
was lying face downwards, groaning. A muddy 
ground-sheet was placed over his shoulders. I 
raised the sheet and found that his wound was 
not dressed. 

"Painful, matey?" I asked. 

"Oh, it's old Pat," muttered the man. 

"Who are you?" I asked, for I did not recog- 
nise the voice. 

"You don't know me!" said the man, surprise 
in his tones. 

He turned a queer, puckered face half round, 
but I did not recognise him even then; pain had 
so distorted his countenance. 

"No," I replied. "Who are you?" 

"Felan," he replied. 

"My God!" I cried, then hurriedly, "I'll dress 
your wound. You'll get carried in to the dress- 
ing-station directly." 

"It's about time," said Felan wearily. "I've 
been out a couple of days. ... Is there no 
R.A.M.C?" 



How My Comrades Fared 117 

I dressed Felan's wound, returned, and looked 
for the corporal, but I could not find him. Some- 
one must have carried him in, I thought. 

Kore had got to the German barbed-wire en- 
tanglement when he breathed in a mouthful of 
smoke which almost choked him at first, and 
afterwards instilled him with a certain placid 
confidence in everything. He came to a leisurely 
halt and looked around him. In front, a platoon 
of the 20th London Regiment, losing its objec- 
tive, crossed parallel to the enemy's trench. Then 
he saw a youth who was with him at school, and 
he shouted to him. The youth stopped; Kore 
came up and the boys shook hands, leant on their 
rifles, and began to talk of old times when a ma- 
chine gun played about their ears. Both got 
hit. 

M 'Crone disappeared; he was never seen by 
any of his regiment after the 25th. 

The four men were reported as killed in the 
casualty list. 



CHAPTER IX 

AT LOOS 

"The wages of sin and a soldier is death." — Trench 
Proverb. 

FOR long I had looked on Loos from a dis- 
tance, had seen the red-brick houses hud- 
dled together brooding under the shade 
of the massive Twin Towers, the giant sentinels 
of the German stronghold. Between me and the 
village lurked a thousand rifles and death-deal- 
ing maxims; out in the open no understanding 
could preserve a man from annihilation, luck 
alone could save him. 

On September 25th I lived in the village. By 
night a ruined village has a certain character of 
its own, the demolition of war seems to give each 
broken wall a consciousness of dignity and 
worth; the moonlight ripples over the chimneys, 
and sheaves of shadow lurk in every nook and 
corner. But by day, with its broken, jerry-built 

houses, the village has no relieving features, it 

118 



At Loos 119 

is merely a heap of broken bricks, rubble and 
mud. Some day, when ivy and lichen grow up 
the walls and cover green the litter that was 
Loos, a quaint, historical air may be given to 
the scene, but now it showed nothing but a de- 
pressing sameness of latchless doors, hingeless 
shutters, destruction and decay. Gone was all 
the fascinating, pathetic melancholy of the night 
when we took possession, but such might be ex- 
pected: the dead is out of keeping with the day. 
I was deep in thought as I stood at the door 
of the dressing-station, the first in Loos, and at 
the moment, the only one. The second German 
trench, the trench that was the enemy's at dawn, 
ran across the bottom of the street, and our boys 
were busy there heaping sandbags on the para- 
pet. A dozen men with loaded rifles stood in 
the dressing-station on guard, and watchful eyes 
scanned the streets, looking for the enemy who 
were still in hiding in the cellars or sniping from 
the upper stories of houses untouched by shell- 
fire. Down in our cellar the wounded and dying 
lay: by night, if they lived till then, we would 
carry them across the open to the dressing-sta- 
tion of Maroc. To venture across now, when the 



120 The Great Push 

big guns chorused a fanfare of fury on the levels, 
would have been madness. 

I went to the door and looked up the street; it 
was totally deserted; a dead mule and several 
khaki-clad figures lay on the pavement, and 
vicious bullets kicked up showers of sparks on 
the cobblestones. I could not tell where they 
were fired from. ... A voice called my name 
and I turned round to see a head peep over the 
trench where it crossed the road. My mate, Bill 
Teake, was speaking. 

"Come 'ere!" he called. "There's some doin's 
goin' to take place." 

I rushed across the open road where a machine 
gun from a hill on the right was sending its mes- 
sages with shrewish persistence, and tumbled into 
the trench at my mate's side. 

"What are the doings?" I asked. 

"The word 'as been passed along that a Ger- 
man observation balloon is going up over Lens 
an' we're goin' to shell it," said Bill. 

"I can't see the blurry thing nohow," he added. 

I looked towards Lens, and saw the town 
pencilled reddish in the morning light with sev- 
eral defiant chimney stacks standing in air. One 



At Loos 121 

of these was smoking, which showed that the 
enemy was still working it. 

I saw the balloon rise over the town. It was 
a massive banana-like construction with ends 
pointing downwards, and it climbed slowly up 
the heavens. At that moment our gunners 
greeted it with a salvo of shrapnel and struck 
it, as far as I could judge. 

It wriggled for a moment, like a big feather 
caught in a drift of air, then disappeared with 
startling suddenness. 

"A neat shot," I said to Bill, who was now 
engaged on the task of looking for the snappy 
maxim shrew that tapped impatiently on the 
sandbagged parapet. 

"I think it's up there," he said, pointing to the 
crest where three or four red-tiled houses snug- 
gled in the cover of a spinney. "It's in one of 
them big 'ouses, bet yer. If I find it I'll get the 
artillery to blow the place to blazes!" he con- 
cluded, with an air of finality. 

I went back to the dressing-station and found 
the men on guard in a state of tense excitement. 
They had seen a German cross the street two 
hundred yards up, and a red-haired youth, Gin- 



122 The Great Push 

ger Turley, who had fired at the man, vowed that 
he had hit him. 

"I saw 'im fall," said Ginger. "Then 'e 
crawled into a 'ouse on 'ands and knees." 

" 'E was only shammin'," said the corporal of 
the guard. "Nobody can be up to these 'ere Al- 
lemongs." 

"I 'it 'im," said Ginger heatedly. "Couldn't 
miss a man at two 'undred and me gettin' pro- 
ficiency pay for good shootin' at S'nalbans (St. 
Albans)." 

A man at the door suddenly uttered a loud 
yell. 

"Get yer 'ipes," he yelled. "Quick! Grease 
out of it and get into the scrap. There's 'undreds 
of 'em up the streets. Come on! Come out of 
it ! We'll give the swine socks !" 

He rushed into the street, raised his rifle to 
his shoulder and fired two rounds. Then he 
raced up the street shouting, with the guard fol- 
lowing. I looked out. 

The men in khaki were rushing on a mob of 
some fifty or sixty Germans who advanced to 
meet them with trembling arms raised over their 
heads, signifying in their manner that they 



At Loos 123 

wished to surrender. I had seen many Germans 
surrender that morning and always noticed that 
their uplifted arms shook as if stricken with 
palsy. I suppose they feared what might befall 
them when they fell into our hands. 

With hands still in air and escorted by our boys 
they filed past the door of the dressing-station. 
All but one man, who was wounded in the jaw. 

"This is a case for you, Pat," said the corporal 
of the guard, and beckoned to the wounded Ger- 
man to come indoors. 

He was an ungainly man, and his clothes clung 
to his body like rags to a scarecrow. His tunic 
was ripped in several places, and a mountain of 
Loos mud clung to his trousers. His face was 
an interesting one, his eyes, blue and frank, 
seemed full of preoccupation that put death out 
of reckoning. 

"Sprechen Anglais?" I asked, floundering in 
the mud of Franco-Germaine interrogation. He 
shook his head; the bullet had blown away part 
of the man's jaw and he could not speak. 

I dressed his wound in silence, an ugly, ghastly 
wound it looked, one that he would hardly re- 
cover from. As I worked with the bandages he 



124 The Great Push 

brought out a little mirror, gazed for a moment 
at his face in the glass, and shook his head sadly. 
He put the mirror back in his pocket, but after a 
second he drew it out again and made a second 
inspection of his wound. 

The dressing done, I inquired by signs if he 
wanted to sleep ; there was still some room in the 
cellar. He pointed his finger at his tunic over 
the breast and I saw a hole there that looked as 
if made by a red-hot poker. I cut the clothes off 
the man with my scissors and discovered that the 
bullet which went through the man's jaw had 
also gone through his chest. He was bleeding 
freely at the back near the spine and in front 
over the heart. . . . The man brought out his 
mirror again, and, standing with his back to a 
shattered looking-glass that still remained in 
the building, he examined his wound after the 
manner of a barber who shows his customer the 
back of his head by use of a mirror. . . . Again 
the German shook his head sadly. I felt sorry 
for the man. My stock of bandages had run 
short, and Ginger Turley, who had received a 
parcel of underclothing a few days before, 
brought out a new shirt from his haversack, and 



At Loos 125 

tearing it into strips, he handed me sufficient 
cloth for a bandage. 

"Poor bloke!" muttered Turley, blushing a 
little as if ashamed of the kind action. "I sup- 
pose it was my shot, too. 'E must be the feller 
that went crawlin' into the buildin'." 

"Not necessarily," I said, hoping to comfort 
Ginger. 

"It was my shot that did it, sure enough," 
Ginger persisted. "I couldn't miss at two 'un- 
dred yards, not if I tried." 

One of the men was looking at a little book, 
somewhat similar to the pay-book we carry on 
active service, which fell from the German's 
pocket. 

"Bavarian !" read the man with the book, and 
fixed a look of interrogation on the wounded 
man, who nodded. 

"Musician?" asked the man, who divined that 
certain German words stated that the Bavarian 
was a musician in civil life. 

A sad look crept into the prisoner's eyes. He 
raised his hands and held them a little distance 
from his lips and moved his fingers rapidly ; then 
he curved his leit arm and drew his right slowly 



126 The Great Push 

backward and forward across in front of his 
body. 

We understood ; he played the flute and violin. 
Ginger Turley loves ragtime and is a master of 
the mouth-organ ; and now having met a brother 
artist in such a woeful plight, Ginger's feelings 
overcame him, and two tears gathered in his 
eyes. 

"I wish I wasn't such a good shot," he mut- 
tered. 

We wrapped the German up in a few rags, and 
since he wanted to follow his comrades, who left 
under escort, we allowed him to go. Ten min- 
utes later, Bill Teake poked his little white potato 
of a nose round the door. 

"I've found 'im out," he said, and his voice 
was full of enthusiasm. 

"Who have you found out?" I asked. 

"That bloomin' machine gun," Bill answered. 
"I saw a little puff of smoke at one of the win- 
ders of a 'ouse up in the spinney. I kept my eye 
on that 'ere winder. Ev'ry time I seed a puff of 
smoke, over comes a bullet. I told the officer, 
and he 'phones down to the artillery. There's 



At Loos 127 

goin' to be some doin's. Come on, Pat, and see 
the fun." 

It was too good to miss. Both of us scurried 
across the road and took up a position in the 
trench from which we could get a good view of 
the spinney. 

"That 'ouse there," said Bill, pointing to the 
red-brick building bordering a slag-heap known 
as "The Double Crassier" which tailed to a thin 
point near the village of Maroc. "There! see at 
the winder on the left a puff of smoke." 

A bullet hit the sandbag at my side. I looked 
at the house indicated by Bill and saw a wisp of 
pale smoke trail up from one of the lower win- 
dows towards the roof. 

"The machine gun's there, sure enough," I 
said. 

Then a bigger gun spoke; a shell whizzed 
through the air and raised a cloud of black dust 
from the rim of the slag-heap. 

"More to the left, you bounders, more to the 
left!" yelled Bill. 

He could not have been more intent on the 
work if he were the gunner engaged upon the 
task of demolition. 



128 The Great Push 

The second shot crept nearer and a shrub up- 
rooted whirled in air. 

"That's the ticket!" yelled Bill, clapping his 
hands. "Come, gunner, get the bounder next 
time!" 

The gunner got him with the next shot which 
struck the building fair in the centre and smashed 
it to pieces. 

"That was a damned good one," said Bill ap- 
provingly. "The bloomin' gun is out of action 
now for the duration of war. Have you seen 
that bloke?" 

Bill Teake pointed at a dead German who lay 
on the crest of the parados, his hands doubled 
under him, and his jaw bound with a bloodstained 
dressing. 

"He just got killed a minute ago," said Bill. 
"He jumped across the trench when the machine 
gun copped 'im an 'e went down flop !" 

"I've just dressed his wounds," I said. 

"He'll need no dressin' now," said Bill, and 
added compassionately, "Poor devil! S'pose 'e 
's 'ad some one as cared for 'im." 

I thought of home and hoped to send a letter 
along to Maroc with a wounded man presently. 



At Loos 129 

From there letters would be forwarded. I had a 
lead pencil in my pocket, but I had no envelope. 

"I'll give you a half-franc for a green enve- 
lope," I said, and Bill Teake took from his pocket 
the green envelope, which needed no regimental 
censure, but was liable to examination at the 
Base. 

" 'Arf-franc and five fags," he said, speaking 
with the studied indifference of a fishwife mak- 
ing a bargain. 

"Half a franc and two fags," I answered. 

" 'Arf a franc and four fags," he said. 

"Three fags," I ventured. 

"Done," said Bill, and added, "I've now sold 
the bloomin' line of communication between my- 
self and my ole man for a few coppers and three 
meesly fags." 

"What's your old man's profession, Bill?" I 
asked. 

"•'Is wot?" 

"His trade?" 

"Yer don't know my ole man, Pat?" he in- 
quired. "Everybody knows 'im. 'E 'as as good 
a reputation as old Times. Yer must 'ave seen 
'im in the Strand wiv 'is shiny buttons, burnished 



130 The Great Push 

like gold in a jooler's winder, carryin' a board 
wiv 'Globe Metal Polish' on it." 

"Oh !" I said with a laugh. 

"But 'e's a devil for 'is suds 'e is " 

"What are suds?" I asked. 

"Beer," said Bill. " 'E can 'old more'n any 
man in Lunnon, more'n the chucker-out at 'The 

Cat and Mustard Pot' boozer in W Road 

even. Yer should see the chucker-out an' my ole 
man comin' 'ome on Saturday night. They keep 
themselves steady by rollin' in opposite direc- 
tions." 

"Men with good reputations don't roll home 
inebriated," I said. "Excessive alcoholic dissi- 
pation is utterly repugnant to dignified human- 
ity." 

"Wot!" 

"Is your father a churchgoer?" I asked. 

"Not 'im," said Bill. " 'E don't believe that 
one can go to 'eaven by climbin' up a church 
steeple. 'E's a good man, that's wot 'e is. 'E 
works 'ard when 'e's workin', 'e can use 'is fives 
wiv anyone, 'e can take a drink or leave it, 
but 'e prefers takin' it. Nobody can take a rise 



At Loos 131 

out o' 'im fer 'e knows 'is place, an' that's more'n 
some people do." 

"Bill, did you kill any Germans this morn- 
ing?" I asked. 

"Maybe I did," Bill answered, "and maybe I 
didn't. I saw one bloke, an Allemong, in the 
front trench laughin' like 'ell. 'I'll make yer 
laugh,' I said to 'im, and shoved my bayonet at 
'is bread basket. Then I seed 'is foot; it was 
right off at the ankle. I left 'im alone. After 
that I 'ad a barney. I was goin' round a traverse 
and right in front of me was a Boche, eight foot 
'igh or more. Oh! 'e 'ad a bayonet as long as 
'imself, and a beard as long as 'is bayonet." 

"What did you do?" 

"Oh! I retreated," said Bill. "Then I met 
four of the Jocks, they 'ad bombs. I told them 
wot I seen an' they went up with me to the 
place. The Boche saw us and 'e rushed inter a 
dug-out. One of the Jocks threw a bomb, and 
bang! " 

"Have you seen Kore?" I asked. 

"No, I didn't see 'im at all," Bill answered. 
"I was mad for a while. Then I saw a lot of 
Alleymongs rush into a dug-out. 'Gor-blimey !' 



132 The Great Push 

I said to the Jocks, 'we'll give 'em 'ell/ and I 
caught 'old of a German bomb, one 'o them kind 
where you pull the string out and this sets the 
fuse goin'. I coiled the string round my fingers 
and pulled. But I couldn't loosen the string. It 
was a go! I 'eld out my arm with the bomb 
'angin'. 'Take it off!' I yelled to the Jocks. Yer 
should see them run off. There was no good in 
me runnin'. Blimey! I didn't 'arf feel bad. Talk 
about a cold sweat ; I sweated icicles ! And there 
was the damned bomb 'angin' from my 'and and 
me thinkin' it was goin' to burst. But it didn't; 
I 'adn't pulled the string out far enough. 

"And that's Loos," he went on, standing on 
the fire-step and looking up the road. "It's 
bashed about a lot. There's 'ardly a 'ouse stand- 
in'. And that's the Tower Bridge," he added, 
looking fixedly at the Twin Towers that stood 
scarred but unbroken over Loos coal mine. 

"There was a sniper up there this mornin'," 
he told me. " 'E didn't 'arf cause some trouble. 
Knocked out dozens of our fellers. 'E was 
brought down at last by a bomb." 

He laughed as he spoke, then became silent. 



At Loos 133 

For fully five minutes there was not a word 
spoken. 

I approached the parapet stealthily and looked 
up the street of Loos, a solemn, shell-scarred, 
mysterious street where the dead lay amidst the 
broken tiles. Were all those brown bundles dead 
men? Some of them maybe were still dying; 
clutching at life with vicious energy. A bundle 
lay near me, a soldier in khaki with his hat gone. 
I could see his close, compact, shiny curls which 
seemed to have been glued on to his skull. Clam- 
bering up the parapet I reached forward and 
turned him round and saw his face. It was 
leaden-hued and dull ; the wan and almost colour- 
less eyes fixed on me in a vague and glassy stare, 
the jaw dropped sullenly, and the tongue hung 
out. Dead. . . . And up the street, down in the 
cellars, at the base of the Twin Towers, they 
were dying. How futile it was to trouble about 
one when thousands needed help. Where should 
I begin? Who should I help first? Any help 
I might be able to give seemed so useless. I had 
been at work all the morning dressing the 
wounded, but there were so many. I was a mere 
child emptying the sea with a tablespoon. I 



134 The Great Push 

crawled into the trench again to find Bill still 
looking over the parapet. This annoyed me. 
Why, I could not tell. 

"What are you looking at?" I asked. 

There was no answer. I looked along the 
trench and saw that all the men were looking 
towards the enemy's line ; watching, as it seemed, 
for something to take place. None knew what 
the next moment would bring forth. The ex- 
pectant mood was prevalent. All were waiting. 

Up the road some houses were still peopled 
with Germans, and snipers were potting at us 
with malicious persistency, but behind the parapet 
we were practically immune from danger. As 
we looked a soldier appeared round the bend of 
the trench, the light of battle in his eyes and his 
body festooned with bombs. 

"It's dangerous to go up the centre of the 
street," I called to him as he came to a halt be- 
side me and looked up the village. 

"Bend down," I said. "Your head is over the 
parapet." I recognised the man. He was Gil- 
hooley the bomber. 

"What does it matter ?" he muttered. "I want 
to get at them. . . . Oh ! I know yer face. . . .j 



At Loos 135 

D'ye mind the champagne at Nouex-les-Mines. 
. . . These bombs are real ones, me boy. . . . Do 
you know where the snipers are?" 

"There's one up there," I said, raising my head 
and pointing to a large house on the left of the 
road near the Twin Towers. "I saw the smoke 
of his rifle when he fired at me a while ago." 

"Then he must get what he's lookin' for," said 
Gilhooley, tightening his belt of bombs, and, 
clutching his rifle, rushed out into the roadway. 
"By Jasus! I'll get him out of it!" 

I raised my head and watched, fascinated. 
With prodigious strides Gilhooley raced up the 
street, his rifle clutched tightly in his hand. Sud- 
denly he paused, as if in thought, and his rifle 
went clattering across the cobbles. Then he samk 
slowly to the ground, kicking out a little with 
his legs. The bullet had hit him in the jaw and 
it came out through the back of his neck. . . . 

I could hear the wounded crying and moaning 
somewhere near, or perhaps far away. A low, 
lazy breeze slouched up from the field which we 
had crossed that morning, and sound travelled 
far. The enemy snipers on Hulluch copse were 
busy, and probably the dying were being hit 



136 The Great Push 

again. Some of them desired it, the slow proc- 
ess of dying on the open field of war is so dread- 
ful. ... A den of guns, somewhere near Lens, 
became voluble, and a monstrous fanfare of fury 
echoed in the heavens. The livid sky seemed to 
pull itself up as if to be out of the way; under 
it the cavalcades of war ran riot. A chorus of 
screeches and yells rose trembling and whirling 
in air, snatching at each other like the snarling 
and barking of angry dogs. 

Bill stood motionless, looking at the enemy's 
line, his gaze concentrated on a single point; in 
his eyes there was a tense, troubled expression, 
as if he was calculating a sum which he could 
not get right. Now and again he would shake 
his head as if trying to throw something off and 
address a remark to the man next him, who did 
not seem to hear. Probably he was asleep. In 
the midst of artillery tumult some men are over- 
come with languor and drop asleep as they stand. 
On the other hand, many get excited, burst into 
song and laugh boisterously at most common- 
place incidents. 

Amidst the riot, an undertone of pain became 
more persistent than ever. The levels where the 



At Loos 137 

wounded lay were raked with shrapnel that burst 
viciously in air and struck the bloodstained earth 
with spiteful vigour. 

The cry for stretcher-bearers came down the 
trench, and I hurried off to attend to the stricken. 
I met him crawling along on all fours, looking 
like an ungainly lobster that has escaped from a 
basket. A bullet had hit the man in the back 
and he was in great pain; so much in pain that 
when I was binding his wound he raised his fist 
and hit me in the face. 

"I'm sorry," he muttered, a moment after- 
wards. "I didn't mean it, but, my God! this is 
hell!" 

"You'll have to lie here," I said, when I put 
the bandage on. "You'll get carried out at night 
when we can cross the open." 

"I'm going now," he said. "I want to go now. 
I must get away. You'll let me go, won't you, 
Pat?" 

"You'll be killed before you're ten yards across 
the open," I said. "Better wait till to-night." 

"Does the trench lead out?" he asked. 

"It probably leads to the front trench which 
the Germans occupied this morning," I said. 



138 The Great Push 

"Well, if we get there it will be a step nearer 
the dressing-station, anyway," said the wounded 
boy. "Take me away from here, do please." 

"Can you stand upright?" 

"I'll try," he answered, and half weeping and 
half laughing, he got to his feet. "I'll be able 
to walk down," he muttered. 

We set off. I walked in front, urging the men 
ahead to make way for a wounded man. No 
order meets with such quick obedience as "Make 
way for wounded." 

All the way from Loos to the churchyard 
which the trench fringes and where the bones of 
the dead stick out through the parapet, the 
trench was in fairly good order, beyond that was 
the dumping ground of death. 

The enemy in their endeavour to escape from 
the Irish that morning crowded the trench like 
sheep in a lane-way, and it was here that the 
bayonet, rifle-butt and bomb found them. Now 
they lay six deep in places. . . . One bare-headed 
man lay across the parapet, his hand grasping his 
rifle, his face torn to shreds with rifle bullets. 
One of his own countrymen, hidden in Hulluch 
copse, was still sniping at the dead thing, believ- 



At Loos 139 

ing it to be an English soldier. Such is the irony 
of war. The wounded man ambled painfully be- 
hind me, grunting and groaning. Sometimes he 
stopped for a moment, leant against the side of 
the trench and swore for several seconds. Then 
he muttered a word of apology and followed me 
in silence. When we came to the places where 
the dead lay six deep we had to crawl across 
them on our hands and knees. To raise our 
heads over the parapet would be courting quick 
death. We would become part of that demolition 
of blood and flesh that was necessary for our 
victory. In front of us a crowd of civilians, old 
men, women and children, was crawling and 
stumbling over the dead bodies. A little boy 
was eating the contents of a bully-beef tin with 
great relish, and the ancient female who accom- 
panied him crossed herself whenever she stum- 
bled across a prostrate German. The civilians 
were leaving Loos. 

On either side we could hear the wounded mak- 
ing moan, their cry was like the yelping of 
drowning puppies. But the man who was with 
me seemed unconscious of his surroundings; 
seldom even did he notice the dead on the floor 



140 The Great Push 

of the trench; he walked over them unconcern- 
edly. 

I managed to bring him down to the dressing- 
station. When we arrived he sat on a seat and 
cried like a child. 



CHAPTER X 



A NIGHT IN LOOS 



"Never see good in an enemy until you have defeated 
him." — War Proverb. 



I 



"TWILIGHT softened the gaunt corners of 
the ruined houses, and sheaves of shad- 
ows cowered in unfathomable corners. 
A wine shop, gashed and fractured, said "hush !" 
to us as we passed; the shell-holed streets gaped 
at the indifferent, unconcerned sky. 

"See the streets are yawning," I said to my 
mate, Bill Teake. 

"That's because they're bored," he replied. 

"Bill," I said, "what do you mean by bored?" 

"They've holes in them," he answer. "Why 
d'yer arst me?" 

"I wanted to know if you were trying to make 
a pun," I said. "That's all." 

Bill grunted, and a moment's silence ensued. 

"Suppose it were made known to you, Bill," I 

said, "that for the rest of your natural life this 

141 



142 The Great Push 

was all you could look forward to, dull hours 
of waiting in the trenches, sleep in sodden dug- 
outs, eternal gun-firing and innumerable bayonet- 
charges ; what would you do ?" 

"Wot would I do?" said Bill, coming to a halt 
in the middle of the street. "This is wot I'd do," 
he said with decision. "I'd put a round in the 
breech, lay my 'ead on the muzzle of my 'ipe, and 
reach down and pull the blurry trigger. Wot 
would you do?" 

"I should become very brave," I replied. 

"I see wot yer mean," said Bill. "Ye'd be up 
to the Victoria Cross caper, and run yer nose 
into danger every time yer got a chance." 

"You may be right," I replied. "No one likes 
this job, but we all endure it as a means towards 
an end." 

"Flat!" I yelled, flopping to the ground and 
dragging Bill with me, as a shell burst on a house 
up the street and flung a thousand splinters round 
our heads. For a few seconds we cowered in 
the mud, then rose to our feet again. 

"There are means by which we are going to 
end war," I said. "Did you see the dead and 
wounded to-day, the men groaning and shriek- 



A Night in Loos 143 

ing, the bombs flung down into cellars, the blood- 
stained bayonets, the gouging and the gruelling; 
all those things are means towards creating peace 
in a disordered world. 

The unrest which precedes night made itself 
felt in Loos. Crows made their way homeward, 
cleaving the air with weary wings; a tottering 
wall fell on the street with a melancholy clatter, 
and a joist creaked near at hand, yearning, as it 
seemed, to break free from its shattered neigh- 
bours. A lone wind rustled down the street, 
weeping over the fallen bricks, and crooning 
across barricades and machine-gun emplace- 
ments. The greyish-white evening sky cast a 
vivid pallor over the Twin Towers, which stood 
out sharply defined against the lurid glow of a 
fire in Lens. 

All around Loos lay the world of trenches, 
secret streets, sepulchral towns, houses whose 
chimneys scarcely reached the level of the earth, 
crooked alleys, bayonet circled squares, and lonely 
graveyards where dead soldiers lay in the silent 
sleep that wakens to no earthly reveille. 

The night fell. The world behind the German 
lines was lighted up with a white glow, the clouds 



144 The Great Push 

seemed afire, and ran with a flame that was not 
red and had no glare. The tint was pale, and it 
trailed over Lens and the spinneys near the town, 
and spread trembling over the levels. White as 
a winding sheet, it looked like a fire of frost, vast 
and wide diffused. Every object in Loos seemed 
to loose its reality, a spectral glimmer hung over 
the ruins, and the walls were no more than out- 
lines. The Twin Towers was a tracery of silver 
and enchanted fairy construction that the sun 
at dawn might melt away, the barbed-wire entan- 
glements (those in front of the second German 
trench had not been touched by our artillery) 
were fancies in gossamer. The world was an 
enchanted poem of contrasts of shadow and shine, 
of nooks and corners black as ebony, and promi- 
nent objects that shone with a spiritual glow. 
Men coming down the street bearing stretchers 
or carrying rations were phantoms, the men 
stooping low over the earth digging holes for 
their dead comrades were as ghostly as that which 
they buried. I lived in a strange world — a world 
of dreams and illusions. 

Where am I ? I asked myself. Am I here ? Do 
I exist? Where are the boys who marched with 



A Night in Loos 145 

me from Les Brebis last night? I had looked on 
them during the day, seeing them as I had never 
seen them before, lying in silent and unquestion- 
ing peace, close to the yearning earth. Never 
again should I hear them sing in the musty barns 
near Givenchy ; never again would we drink red 
wine together in Cafe Pierre le Blanc, Nouex- 
les-Mines. . . . 

Bill Teake went back to his duties in the trench 
and left me. 

A soldier came down the street and halted op- 
posite. 

"What's that light, soldier?" he asked me. 

"I'm sure I don't know," I answered. 

"I hear it's an ammunition depot afire in Lens," 
said the man. "Our shells hit it, and their blurry 
bullets have copped me now," he muttered, drop- 
ping on the roadway and crawling towards the 
shelter of the wall on his belly. 

"Where are you hit?" I asked, helping him 
into the ruins of the estaminet — my dressing-sta- 
tion. 

"In the leg," he answered, "just below the knee. 
It was when I was speaking to you about the am- 
munition depot on fire. 'Our shells hit it,' I said, 



146 The Great Push 

and just then something went siss! through my 
calf. 'Their blurry bullets have copped me now,' 
I said, didn't I?" 

"You did," I answered, laying my electric torch 
on the table and placing the wounded man on the 
floor. I ripped open his trousers and found the 
wound; the bullet had gone through the calf. 

"Can you use your foot?" I asked, and he 
moved his boot up and down. 

"No fracture," I told him. "You're all right 
for blighty, matey." 

One of my mates who was sleeping in a cellar 
came up at that moment. 

"Still dressing wounded, Pat?" he asked. 

"I just got wounded a minute ago," said the 
man on the floor as I fumbled about with a first 
field dressing. "I was speaking to Pat about the 
fire at Lens, and I told him that our shells hit 
it, 'and a blurry bullet has copped me now/ I 
said, when I felt something go siss ! through my 
leg." 

"Lucky dog," said the man on the stair head. 
"I'd give fifteen pounds for your wound." 

"Nothing doing," said the man on the floor 
with a laugh. 



A Night in Loos 147 

"When can I get down to the dressing-sta- 
tion?" he asked. 

"Now, if you can walk," I told him. "If you're 
to be carried I shall need three other men; the 
mud is knee deep on the road to Maroc." 

"I'll see if I can walk," said the man, and tried 
to rise to his feet. The effort was futile, he col- 
lapsed like a wet rag. Fifteen minutes later four 
of us left Loos bearing a stretcher on our shoul- 
ders, and trudged across the fields to the main 
road and into the crush of war traffic, hideously 
incongruous in the pale light of the quiet night. 
The night was quiet, for sounds that might make 
for riot were muffled by the mud. The limbers' 
wheels were mud to the axles, the mules drew 
their legs slowly out of muck almost reaching 
their bellies. Motor ambulances, wheeled stretch- 
ers, ammunition wagons, gun carriages, limbers, 
water-carts, mules, horses and men going up 
dragged their sluggish way through the mud on 
one side of the road; mules, horses and men, wa- 
ter-carts, limbers, gun carriages, ammunition 
wagons, wheeled stretchers and motor ambu- 
lances coming down moved slowly along the other 
side. Every man had that calm and assured in- 



148 The Great Push 

difference that comes with ordinary everyday life. 
Each was full of his own work, preoccupied with 
his toil, he was lost to the world around him. For 
the driver of the cart that we followed, a prob- 
lem had to be worked out. The problem was this : 
how could he bring his mules and vehicles into 
Maroc and bring up a second load, then pilot his 
animals through mud and fire into Les Brebis 
before dawn; feed himself and his mules (when 
he got into safety), drink a glass or two of wine 
(if he had the money to pay for it), and wrap 
himself in his blanket and get to sleep in decent 
time for a good day's rest. Thus would he finish 
his night of work if the gods were kind. But 
they were not. 

A momentary stoppage, and the mules stood 
stiffly in the mud, the offside wheeler twitching 
a long, restless ear. The driver lay back in his 
seat, resigned to the delay. I could see his whip 
in air, his face turned to the east where the blaz- 
ing star-shells lit the line of battle. A machine 
gun spoke from Hill 70, and a dozen searching 
bullets whizzed about our heads. The driver ut- 
tered a sharp, infantile yell like a snared rabbit, 
leant sideways, and fell down on the roadway. 



A Night in Loos 149 

The mule with the twitching ear dropped on top 
of the man and kicked out wildly with its hind 
legs. 

"Cut the 'oss out!" yelled someone from the 
top of a neighbouring wagon, and three or four 
soldiers rushed to the rescue, pulled the driver 
clear, and felt his heart. 

"Dead," one said, dodging to avoid the hoofs 
of the wounded mule. "The bullet 'as caught 
the poor cove in the forehead. . . . Well, it's all 
over now, and there's nothing to be done." 

"Shoot the mule," someone suggested. "It's 
kicking its mate in the belly. . . . Also put the 
dead man out of the roadway. 'E'll get mixed 
with the wheels." 

Someone procured a rifle, placed the muzzle 
close to the animal's ear, and fired. The mule 
stretched its hind legs lazily out and ceased its 
struggles. Movement was resumed ahead, and 
dodging round the dead man, we continued our 
journey through the mud. It was difficult to 
make headway, our legs were knee-deep in slush, 
and the monstrous futility of shoving our way 
through, wearied us beyond telling. Only at rare 
intervals could we lift our feet clear of the 



150 The Great Push 

ground and walk in comparative ease for a few 
moments. Now and again a machine gun opened 
on the moving throng, and bullets hummed by 
perilously close to our ears. The stretcher was 
a dead weight on us, and the poles cut into our 
shoulders. 

The Scottish had charged across the road in 
the morning, and hundreds had come to grief. 
They were lying everywhere, out on the fields, 
by the roadside, and in the roadway mixed up 
with the mud. The driver who had been killed 
a moment ago was so preoccupied with his task 
that he had no time for any other work but his 
own. We were all like him. We had one job to 
do and that job took up our whole attention until 
it was completed. That was why our party did 
not put down our stretcher on the road and raise 
the dead from the mud ; we walked over them. 

How cold they looked, the kilted lads lying 
on their backs in the open, their legs, bare from 
knee to hip, white and ghostly in the wan light 
of the blazing ammunition depot at Lens. 

Mud on the roadway, reaching to the axles of 
the limber wheels, dead men on the roadside, 
horses and mules tugging and straining at the 



A Night in Loos 151 

creaking vehicles, wounded men on the stretch- 
ers; that was the picture of the night, and on 
we trudged, moving atoms of a pattern that kept 
continually repeating itself. 

The mutilated and maimed who still lay out in 
the open called plaintively for succour. "For 
God's sake bring me away from here," a voice 
called. "I've been lying out this last four days." 
The man who spoke had been out since dawn, but 
periods of unconsciousness had disordered his 
count of time, and every conscious moment was 
an eternity of suffering. 

We arrived at Q instead of Maroc, hav- 
ing missed the right turning. The village was 
crowded with men; a perfect village it was, with 
every house standing, though the civilian popula- 
tion had long since gone to other places. Two 
shells, monstrous twelve-inch terrors, that failed 
to explode, lay on the pavement at the entrance. 
We went past these gingerly, as ladies in dainty 
clothing might pass a fouling post, and carried 
our burden down the streets to the dressing- 
station. Outside the door were dozens of 
stretchers, and on each a stricken soldier, quiet 
and resigned, who gazed into the cheerless and 



152 The Great Push 

unconcerned sky as if trying to find some dead- 
ened hope. 

A Scottish regiment relieved from the trenches 
stood round a steaming dixie of tea, each man 
with a mess-tin in his hand. I approached the 
Jocks. 

"Any tea to spare?" I asked one. 

"Aye, mon, of course there's a drappie goin , , ,, 
he answered, and handed me the mess-tin from 
which he had been drinking. 

"How did you fare to-day?" I asked. 

"There's a wheen o' us left yet," he replied 
with a solemn smile. "A dozen dixies of tea 
would nae gang far among us yesterday ; but wi' 
one dixie the noo, we've some to spare. . . . 
Wha' d'ye belong tae?" he asked. 

"The London Irish," I told him. 

" 'Twas your fellows that kicked the futba' 
across the field?" 

"Yes." 

"Into the German trench ?" 

"Not so far," I told the man. "A bullet hit 
the ball by the barbed-wire entanglements ; I saw 
it lying there during the day." 



A Night in Loos 153 

" 'Twas the maddest thing I've ever heard o'," 
said the Jock. "Hae ye lost many men?" 

"A good number," I replied. 

"I suppose ye did," said the man, but by his 
voice, I knew that he was not in the least inter- 
ested in our losses; not even in the issue of battle. 
In fact, few of us knew of the importance of the 
events in which we took part, and cared as little. 
If I asked one of our boys at that moment what 
were his thoughts he would answer, if he spoke 
truly: "I wonder when we're going to get re- 
lieved," or "I hope we're going to get a month's 
rest when we get out." Soldiers always speak of 
"we"; the individual is submerged in his regi- 
ment. We, soldiers, are part of the Army, the 
British Army, which will be remembered in days 
to come, not by a figurehead, as the fighters of 
Waterloo are remembered by Wellington, but as 
an army mighty in deed, prowess and endurance ; 
an army which outshone its figureheads. 

I went back to the dressing-station. Our 
wounded man was inside, and a young doctor 
was busy putting on a fresh dressing. The sol- 
dier was narrating the story of his wound. 

"I was speaking to a stretcher-bearer about 



154 The Great Push 

the ammunition depot afire in Lens," he was say- 
ing. " 'Our shells hit it, and their bloomin' bul- 
lets 'ave copped me now/ I said, when something 
went siss! through my leg." 

The man gazed round at the door and saw 
me. 

''Wasn't that what I said, Pat?" he asked. 

"Yes," I answered. "You said that their 
blooming bullets had copped you." 



CHAPTER XI 

LOOS 

The dead men lay on the cellar stair, 
Toll of the bomb that found them there; 
In the streets men fell as a bullock drops, 
Sniped from the fringe of Hulluch copse. 
And stiff in khaki the boys were laid — 
Food of the bullet and hand-grenade — 
This we saw when the charge was done, 
And the East grew pale to the rising sun 
In the town of Loos in the morning. 

A RIM of grey clouds clustered thick on 
the horizon as if hiding some wonderful 
secret from the eyes of men. Above my 
head the stars were twinkling, a soft breeze 
swung over the open, and moist gusts caught me 
in the face as I picked my way carefully through 
the still figures in brown and grey that lay all 
over the stony face of the level lands. A spinney 
on the right was wrapped in shadow, and when, 
for a moment, I stood to listen, vague whispers 
and secret rustlings could be heard all around. 
The hour before the dawn was full of wonder, 

the world in which I moved was pregnant with 

155 



156 The Great Push 

mystery. "Who are these?" I asked myself as 
I looked at the still figures in khaki. "Where is 
the life, the vitality of yesterday's dawn; the 
fire of eager eyes, the mad pulsing of roving 
blood, and the great heart of young adventure? 
Has the roving, the vitality and the fire come to 
this ; gone out like sparks from a star-shell falling 
in a pond? What are these things here? What 
am I? What is the purpose served by all this 
demolition and waste?" Like a child in the dark 
I put myself the question, but there was no an- 
swer. The stars wheel on their courses over the 
dance of death and the feast of joy, ever the 
same. 

I walked up to the church by the trench 
through the graveyard where the white bones 
stuck out through the parapet. A pale mist gath- 
ered round the broken headstones and crept 
along the bushes of the fence. The Twin Towers 
stood in air — moody, apathetic, regardless of the 
shrapnel incense that the guns wafted against 
the lean girders. Sparrows twittered in the field, 
and a crow broke clumsily away from the 
branches in the spinney. A limber jolted along 
the road near me creaking and rumbling. On! 



Loos 157 

driver, on! Get to Les Brebis before the dawn, 
and luck be with you! If the enemy sees you! 
On! on! I knew that he hurried; that one eye 
was on the east where the sky was flushing a 
faint crimson, and the other on the road in front 
where the dead mules grew more distinct and 
where the faces of the dead men showed more 
clearly. 

At that moment the enemy began to shell the 
road and the trench running parallel to it. I 
slipped into the shelter and waited. The trans- 
port came nearer, rolling and rumbling; the 
shrapnel burst violently. I cowered close to the 
parapet and I had a vivid mental picture of the 
driver leaning forward on the neck of his mule, 
his teeth set, his breath coming in short, sudden 
gasps. "Christ! am I going to get out of it?" 
he must have said. "Will dawn find me at Les 
Brebis?" 

Something shot clumsily through the air and 
went plop! against the parados. 

"Heavens ! it's all up with me !" I said, and 
waited for the explosion. But there was none. 
I looked round and saw a leg on the floor of the 
trench, the leg of the transport driver, with its 



158 The Great Push 

leg-iron shining like silver. The man's boot was 
almost worn through in the sole, and the upper 
was gashed as if with a knife. I'm sure it must 
have let in the wet. . . . And the man was alive 
a moment ago! The mule was still clattering 
along, I could hear the rumble of the wagon. 
. . . The firing ceased, and I went out in the 
open again. 

I walked on the rim of the parapet and gazed 
into the dark streak of trench where the shadows 
clustered round traverse and dug-out door. In 
one bay a brazier was burning, and a bent figure 
of a man leant over a mess-tin of bubbling tea. 
All at once he straightened himself and looked up 
at me. 

'Tat MacGill?" he queried. 

"A good guess," I answered. "You're making 
breakfast early." 

"A drop of tea on a cold morning goes down 
well," he answered. "Will you have a drop? 
I've milk and a sultana cake." 

"How did you come by that?" I asked. 

"In a dead man's pack," he told me, as he 
emptied part of the contents of the tin into a tin 
mug and handed it up. 



Loos 159 

The tea was excellent. A breeze swept over 
the parapet and ushered in the dawn. My heart 
fluttered like a bird; it was so happy, so wonder- 
ful to be alive, drinking tea from a sooty mess- 
tin on the parapet of the trench held by the enemy 
yesterday. 

"It's quiet at present," I said. 

"It'll soon not be quiet," said the man in the 
trench, busy now with a rasher of bacon which 
he was frying on his mess-tin lid. "Where have 
you come from?" 

"I've been all over the place," I said. "Maroc, 
and along that way. You should see the road to 
Maroc. Muck to the knees; limbers, carts, 
wagons, guns, stretchers, and God knows what ! 
going up and down. Dead and dying mules; 
bare-legged Jocks flat in the mud and wheels go- 
ing across them. I'll never forget it." 

"Nobody that has been through this will ever 
forget it," said the man in the trench. "I've seen 
more sights than enough. But nothing disturbs 
me now. I remember a year ago if I saw a 
man getting knocked down I'd run a mile; I 
never saw a dead person till I came here. Will 
you have a bit of bacon and fried bread?" 



160 The Great Push 

"Thanks," I answered, reaching down for the 
food. "It's very good of you." 

"Don't mention it, Pat," he said, blushing as 
if ashamed of his kindness. "Maybe, it'll be my 
turn to come to you next time I'm hungry. Any 
word of when we're getting relieved?" 

"I don't hear anything," I said. "Shortly, I 
hope. Many of your mates killed?" I asked. 

"Many of them indeed," he replied. "Old L. 
went west the moment he crossed the top. He 
had only one kick at the ball. A bullet caught 
him in the belly. I heard him say 'A foul; a 
blurry foul !' as he went all in a heap. He was 
a sticker! Did you see him out there?" 

He pointed a thumb to the field in rear. 

"There are so many," I replied. "I did not 
come across him." 

"And then B., D., and R., went," said the 
man in the trench. "B. with a petrol bomb, D. 
with shrapnel, and R. with a bayonet wound. 
Some of the Bavarians made a damned good 
fight for it." . . . 

Round the traverse a voice rose in song, a 
trembling, resonant voice, and we guessed that 
sleep was still heavy in the eyes of the singer : 



Loos 161 

'There's a silver lining through the dark clouds shining. 
We'll turn the dark cloud inside out till the boys come 
home." 



"Ah ! it will be a glad day and a sorrowful day 
when the boys come home," said the man in the 
trench, handing" me a piece of sultana cake. "The 
children will be cheering, the men will be cheer- 
ing, the women — some of them. One woman 
will say: 'There's my boy, doesn't he look well 
in uniform?' Then another will say: 'Two boys 
I had, they're not here ' " 

I saw a tear glisten on the cheek of the boy 
below me, and something seemed to have caught 
in his throat. His mood craved privacy, I could 
tell that by the dumb appeal in his eyes. 

"Good luck, matey," I mumbled, and walked 
away. The singer looked up as I was passing. 

"Mornin', Pat," he said. "How goes it?" 

"Not at all bad," I answered. 

"Have you seen W. ?" asked the singer. 

"I've been talking to him for the last twenty 
minutes," I said. "He has given me half his 
breakfast." 

"I suppose he couldn't sleep last night," said 
the singer, cutting splinters of wood for the 



162 The Great Push 

morning- fire. "You've heard that his brother 
was killed yesterday morning?" 

"Oh!" I muttered. "No, I heard nothing about 
it until now." 

The dawn glowed crimson, streaks of red shot 
through the clouds to eastwards and touched the 
bowl of sky overhead with fingers of flame. 
From the dug-outs came the sound of sleepy 
voices, and a soldier out in open trench was clean- 
ing his bayonet. A thin white fog lay close to 
the ground, and through it I could see the dead 
boys in khaki clinging, as it were, to the earth. 
I could see a long way round. Behind was the 
village where the wounded were dressed; how 
blurred it looked with its shell-scarred chimneys 
in air like the fingers of a wounded hand held up 
to a doctor. The chimneys, dun-tinted and lonely, 
stood silent above the mist, and here and there a 
tree which seemed to have been ejected from the 
brotherhood of its kind stood out in the open all 
alone. The smoke of many fires curled over the 
line of trenches. Behind the parapets lay many 
dead; they had fallen in the trench and their 
comrades had flung them out into the open. It 
was sad to see them there; yesterday or the day 



Loos 163 

before their supple legs were strong for a long 
march; to-day 

A shell burst dangerously near, and I went into 
the trench ; the Germans were fumbling for their 
objective. Our artillery, as yet quiet, was mak- 
ing preparations for an anticipated German 
counter-attack, and back from our trench to Les 
Brebis, every spinney concealed a battery, every 
tree a gun, and every broken wall an ammunition 
depot. The dawning sun showed the terror of 
war quiet in gay disguise; the blue-grey, long- 
nosed guns hidden in orchards where the apples 
lingered late, the howitzers under golden-fringed 
leaves, the metallic glint on the weapons' muz- 
zles; the gunners asleep in adjacent dug-outs, 
their blankets tied tightly around their bodies, 
their heads resting on heavy shells, fit pillows for 
the men whose work dealt in death and destruc- 
tion. The sleepers husbanded their energy for 
trying labour, the shells seemed to be saving their 
fury for more sure destruction. All our men 
were looking forward to a heavy day's work. 

I went back to the dressing-station in Loos. 
The street outside, pitted with shell-holes, showed 
a sullen face to the leaden sky. The dead lay in 



164 The Great Push 

the gutters, on the pavement, at the door-steps; 
the quick in the trenches were now consolidating 
our position, strengthening the trench which we 
had taken from the Germans. Two soldiers on 
guard stood at the door of the dressing-station. 
I dressed a few wounds and lit a cigarette. 

''What's up with that fool?" said a voice at 
the door, and I turned to the man who spoke. 

"Who?" I inquired. 

"Come and see," said the man at the door. I 
looked up the street and saw one of our boys 
standing in the roadway and the smoke of a con- 
cussion shell coiling round his body. It was Bill 
Teake. He looked round, noticed us, and I could 
see a smile flower broadly on his face. He made 
a step towards us, halted and said something that 
sounded like "Yook! yook!" Then he took an- 
other step forward and shot out his hand as if 
playing bowls. 

"He's going mad?" I muttered. "Bill, what 
are you doing?" I cried to him. 

"Yook! yook! yook!" he answered in a coaxing 
voice. 

"A bullet will give you yook! yook! directly," 
I cried. "Get under cover and don't be a fool." 



Loos 165 

"Yook! yook!" 

Then a shell took a neighbouring chimney 
away and a truckful of bricks assorted itself on 
the roadway in Bill's neighbourhood. Out of the 
smother of dust and lime a fowl, a long-necked 
black hen, fluttered into the air and flew towards 
our shelter. On the road in front it alighted and 
wobbled its head from one side to another in a 
cursory inspection of its position. Bill Teake 
came racing down the road. 

"Don't frighten it away!" he yelled. "Don't 
shout. I want that 'en. It's my own 'en. I 
discovered it. Yook! yook! yook!" 

He sobered his pace and approached the hen 
with cautious steps. The fowl was now standing 
on one leg, the other leg drawn up under its 
wing, its head in listening position, and its atti- 
tude betokened extreme dejection. It looked for 
all the world like Bill when he peers down the 
neck of a rum jar and finds the jar empty. 

"Not a word now," said Teake, fixing one eye 
on me and another on the hen. "I must get my 
feelers on this 'ere cackler. It was up there sit- 
tin' atop of a dead Jock when I sees it. . . . 
Yook! yook! That's wot you must say to a 



166 T4ie Great Push 

bloomin' 'en w'en yer wants ter nab it. . . . 
Yook! yook! yook!" 

He threw a crumb to the fowl. The hen picked 
it up, swallowed it, and hopped off for a little 
distance. Then it drew one leg up under its 
wing and assumed a look of philosophic calm. 

"Clever hen !" I said. 

"Damned ungrateful fraud!" said Bill angrily. 
"I've given it 'arf my iron rations. If it wasn't 
that I might miss it I'd fling a bully-beef tin at 
it." 

"Where's your rifle?" I inquired. 

"Left it in the trench," Bill replied. "I just 
came out to look for sooveneers. This is the only 
sooveneer I seen. Yook! yook! I'll sooveneer 
yer, yer swine. Don't yer understand yer own 
language?" 

The hen made a noise like a chuckling frog. 

"Yes, yer may uck! uck!" cried Bill, apostro- 
phising the fowl. "I'll soon stop yer uck! uck! 
yer one-legged von Kluck! Where's a rifle to 
spare?" 

I handed him a spare rifle which belonged to a 
man who had been shot outside the door that 
morning. 



Loos 167 

"Loaded?" asked Bill. 

"Loaded/' I lied. 

The Cockney lay down on the roadway, 
stretched the rifle out in front, took steady aim, 
and pulled the trigger. A slight click was the 
only response. 

"That's a dirty trick," he growled, as we 
roared with laughter. "A bloomin' Alleymong 
wouldn't do a thing like that." 

So saying he pulled the bolt back, jerked a 
cartridge from the magazine, shoved a round 
into the breech and fired. The fowl fluttered in 
agony for a moment, then fell in a heap on the 
roadway. Bill handed the rifle back to me. 

"I'll cook that 'en to-night," he said, with 
studied slowness. "It'll make a fine feed. 'En 
well cooked can't be beaten, and I'm damned if 
you'll get one bone to pick!" 

"Bill!" I protested. 

"Givin' me a hipe as wasn't loaded and sayin' 
it was," he muttered sullenly. 

"I haven't eaten a morsel of hen since you 
pinched one at Mazingarbe," I said. "You re- 
member that. 'Twas a damned smart piece of 
work." 



168 The Great Push 

A glow of pride suffused his face. 

"Well, if there's any to spare to-night I'll let 
you know," said my mate. "Now I'm off." 

"There's a machine gun playing on the road," 
I called to him, as he strolled off towards the 
trench with the hen under his arm. "You'd bet- 
ter double along." 

He broke into a run, but suddenly stopped 
right in the centre of the danger zone. I could 
hear the bullets rapping on the cobblestones. 

"I'll tell yer when the feed's ready, Pat," he 
called back. "You can 'ave 'arf the 'en for 
supper." 

Then he slid off and disappeared over the rim 
of the trench. 



CHAPTER XII 

RETREAT 

"There's a battery snug in the spinney, 

A French 'seventy-five' in the mine, 
A big 'nine-point-two' in the village, 

Three miles to the rear of the line. 
The gunners will clean them at dawning, 

And slumber beside them all day, 
But the guns chant a chorus at sunset, 

And then you should hear what they say." 

THE hour was one o'clock in the after- 
noon, and a slight rain was now falling. 
A dug-out in the bay leant wearily for- 
ward on its props; the floor of the trench, foul 
with blood and accumulated dirt, showed a weary 
face to the sky. A breeze had sprung up, and 
the watcher who looked over the parapet was 
met in the face with a soft, wet gust laden with 
rain swept off the grassy spot in front. ... A 
gaunt willow peeped over the sandbags and 
looked timorously down at us. All the sandbags 
were perforated by machine-gun fire, a new gun 

was hidden on the rise on our right, but none of 

169 



170 The Great Push 

our observers could locate its position. On the 
evening before it had accounted for eighty-seven 
casualties; from the door of a house in Loos I 
had seen our men, who had attempted to cross 
the street, wiped out like flies. 

Very heavy fighting had been going on in the 
front line to the east of Hill 70 all through the 
morning. Several bomb attacks were made by 
the enemy, and all were repulsed. For the men 
in the front line trench the time was very trying. 
They had been subject to continual bomb attacks 
since the morning before. 

"'Ow long 'ave we been 'ere?" asked Bill 
Teake, as he removed a clot of dirt from the 
foresight guard of his rifle. ''I've lost all count 
of time." 

"Not such a length of time," I told him. 

"Time's long a-passin' 'ere," said Bill, leaning 
his head against the muddy parados. "Gawd, 
I'd like to be back in Les Brebis drinkin' beer, 
or 'avin' a bit of a kip for a change. When I 
go back to blighty I'll go to bed and I'll not get 
up for umpty-eleven months." 

"We may get relieved to-morrow night," I 
said. 



Retreat 171 

"To-morrow'll be another day nearer the day 
we get relieved, any'ow," said Bill sarcastically. 
"And another day nearer the end of the war," 
he added. 

"I'm sick of it," he muttered, after a short 
silence. "I wish the damned war was blurry well 
finished. It gives me the pip. Curse the war! 
Curse everyone and everything! If the Alley- 
mongs would come over now, I'd not lift my 
blurry 'ipe. I'd surrender; that's wot I'd do. 
Curse . . . Damn . . . Blast ..." 

I slipped to the wet floor of the trench asleep 
and lay there, only to awaken ten minutes later. 
I awoke with a start; somebody jumping over 
the parapet had planted his feet on my stomach. 
I rose from the soft earth and looked round. A 
kilted soldier was standing in the trench, an awk- 
ward smile on his face and one of his knees 
bleeding. Bill, who was awake, was gazing at 
the kiltie with wide open eyes. 

The machine gun was speaking from the 
enemy's line, a shrewish tang in its voice, and 
little spurts of dirt flicked from our sandbags 
shot into the trench. 

Bill's eyes looked so large that they surprised 



172 The Great Push 

me; I had never seen him look in such a way 
before. What was happening? Several soldiers 
belonging to strange regiments were in our trench 
now ; they were jumping over the parapet in from 
the open. One man I noticed was a nigger in 
khaki. . . . 

"They're all from the front trench," said Bill 
in a whisper of mysterious significance, and a 
disagreeable sensation stirred in my being. 

"That means," I said, and paused. 

"It means that the Allemongs are gettin' the 
best of it," said Bill, displaying an unusual in- 
terest in the action of his rifle. "They say the 
2 ist and 24th Division are retreating from '111 
70. Too 'ot up there. It's goin' to be a blurry 
row 'ere," he muttered. "But we're goin' to stick 
'ere, wotever 'appens. No damned runnin' away 
with us!" 

The trench was now crowded with strangers, 
and others were coming in. The field in front 
of our line was covered with figures running to- 
wards us. Some crouched as they ran, some tot- 
tered and fell; three or four crawled on their 
bellies, and many dropped down and lay where 
they fell. 



Retreat 173 

The machine gun swept the field, and a vicious 
hail of shrapnel swept impartially over the quick, 
the wounded and the dead. A man raced up to 
the parapet which curved the bay in which I 
stood, a look of terror on his face. There he 
stood a moment, a timorous foot on a sandbag, 
calculating the distance of the jump. . . . He 
dropped in, a bullet wound showing on the back 
of his tunic, and lay prostrate, face upwards on 
the floor of the trench. A second man jumped in 
on the face of the stricken man. 

I hastened to help, but the newcomers pressed 
forward and pushed me along the trench. No 
heed was taken of the wounded man. 

"Back! get back!" yelled a chorus of voices. 
"We've got to retire." 

"'Oo the blurry 'ell said that?" I heard Bill 
Teake thunder. "If ye're not goin' to fight, get 
out of this 'ere place and die in the fields. Run- 
nin' away, yer blasted cowards!" 

No one seemed to heed him. The cry of "Back! 
back !" redoubled in violence. "We've got orders 
to retire! We must get back at once!" was the 
shout. "Make way there, let us get by." 

It was almost impossible to stem the tide which 



174 The Great PusK 

swept up the trench towards Loos Road where 
the road leaves the village. I had a fleeting 
glimpse of one of our men rising on the fire 
position and gazing over the parapet. Even as 
he looked a bullet hit him in the face, and he 
dropped back, clawing at the air with his fin- 
gers. . . . Men still crowded in from the front, 
jumping on the struggling crush in the trench. 
... In front of me was a stranger, and in front 
of him was Rifleman Pryor, trying to press back 
against the oncoming men. A bullet ricochetted 
off a sandbag and hit the stranger on the shoul- 
der and he fell face downwards to the floor. I 
bent to lift the wounded fellow and got pushed on 
top of him. 

"Can you help him?" Pryor asked. 

"If you can keep the crowd back," I muttered, 
getting to my feet and endeavouring to raise 
the fallen man. 

Pryor pulled a revolver from his pocket, lev- 
elled it at the man behind me and shouted: 

"If you come another step further I'll put a 
bullet through your head." 

This sobered the soldier at the rear, who 
steadied himself by placing his hand against the 



Retreat 175 

traverse. Then he called to those who followed, 
"Get back! there's a wounded man on the floor 
of the trench." 

A momentary halt ensued. Pryor and I 
gripped the wounded man, raised him on the 
parapet and pushed him into a shell-hole behind 
the sandbags. Lying flat on the ground up there 
I dressed the man's wounds. Pryor sat beside 
me, fully exposed to the enemy's fire, his re- 
volver in his hand. 

"Down, Pryor," I said several times. "You'll 
get hit." 

"Oh, my time hasn't come yet," he said. "I'll 
not be done in this time, anyway. Fighting is 
going on in the front trench yet, and dozens of 
men are racing this way. Many of them are 
falling. I think some of our boys are firing at 
them, mistaking them for Germans. . . . Here's 
our colonel coming along the trench." 

The colonel was in the trench when I got back 
there, exhorting his men to stand and make a 
fight of it. "Keep your backs to the walls, boys," 
he said, "and fight to the last." 

The Irish had their back to the wall, no man 
deserted his post. The regiment at the moment 



176 The Great Push 

was the backbone of the Loos front; if the boys 
wavered and broke the thousands of lives that 
were given to make a victory of Loos would have 
been lost in vain. Intrepid little Bill Teake, who 
was going to surrender to the first German whom 
he met, stood on the banquette, his jaw thrust 
forward determinedly and the light of battle in 
his eyes. Now and again he turned round and 
apostrophised the soldiers who had fallen back 
from the front line. 

"Runnin' away !" he yelled. "Ugh.! Get back 
again and make a fight of it. Go for the Alle- 
mongs just like you's go for rum rations." 

The machine gun on the hill peppered Loos 
Road and dozens dropped there. The trench 
crossing the road was not more than a few feet 
deep at any time, and a wagon which had fallen 
in when crossing a hastily-constructed bridge the 
night before, now blocked the way. To pass 
across the men had to get up on the road, and 
here the machine gun found them ; and all round 
the wagon bleeding bodies were lying three deep. 

A young officer of the Regiment, whose 

men were carried away in the stampede, stood on 
the road with a Webley revolver in his hand 



Retreat 177 

and tried to urge his followers back to the front 
trench. "It's all a mistake," he shouted. "The 
Germans did not advance. The order to retire 
was a false one. Back again; boys, get back. 
Now, get back for the regiment's sake. If you 
don't we'll be branded with shame. Come now, 
make a stand and I'll lead you back again." 

Almost simultaneously a dozen bullets hit him 
and he fell, his revolver still in his hand. Bill 
Teake procured the revolver at dusk. . . . 

Our guns came suddenly into play and a hell- 
riot of artillery broke forth. Guns of all calibres 
were brought into work, and all spoke earnestly, 
madly, the 4*2's in the emplacement immediately 
to rear, the 9'2's back at Maroc, and our big 
giants, the caterpillar howitzers, away behind 
further still. Gigantic shells swung over our 
heads, laughing, moaning, whistling, hooting, 
yelling. We could see them passing high up in 
air, looking for all the world like beer bottles 
flung from a juggler's hand. The messengers of 
death came from everywhere and seemed to be 
everywhere. 

The spinney on the spur was churned, shiv- 
ered, blown to pieces. Trees uprooted rose 



178 The Great Push 

twenty yards in the air, paused for a moment to 
take a look round, as it were, when at the zenith 
of their flight, then sank slowly, lazily to earth 
as if selecting a spot to rest upon. Two red- 
brick cottages with terra-cotta tiles which snug- 
gled amidst the trees were struck simultaneously, 
and they went up in little pieces, save where one 
rafter rose hurriedly over the smoke and swayed, 
a clearly denned black line, in mid-air. Coming 
down abruptly it found a resting place on the 
branches of the trees. One of the cottages held 
a German gun and gunners. . . . Smoke, dust, 
lyddite fumes robed the autumn-tinted trees on 
the crest, the concussion shells burst into lurid 
flame, the shrapnel shells puffed high in air, and 
their white, ghostly smoke paled into the over- 
cast heavens. 

The retreat was stopped for a moment. The 

Regiment recovered its nerve and fifty or 

sixty men rushed back. Our boys cheered. . . . 
But the renewed vitality was short-lived. A hail 
of shrapnel caught the party in the field and 
many of them fell. The nigger whom I had no- 
ticed earlier came running back, his teeth chat- 
tering, and flung himself into the trench. He lay 



Retreat 179 

on the floor and refused to move until Bill Teake 
gave him a playful prod with a bayonet. Our 
guns now spoke boisterously, and the German 
trenches on the hill were being blown to little 
pieces. Dug-outs were rioting, piecemeal, in air, 
parapets were crumbling hurriedly in and bury- 
ing the men in the trench, bombs spun lazily in 
air, and the big caterpillar howitzers flung their 
projectiles across with a loud whoop of tumult. 
Our thousand and one guns were bellowing their 
terrible anthem of hate. 

Pryor stood on the fire-step, his bayonet in 
one hand, an open tin of bully-beef in the other. 

"There's no damned attack on at all," he said. 

"A fresh English regiment came up and the 

got orders to retire for a few hundred yards to 
make way for them. Then there was some con- 
fusion, a telephone wire got broken, the retire- 
ment became a retreat. A strategic retreat, of 
course," said Pryor sarcastically, and pointed at 
the broken wagon on the Loos Road. "A stra- 
tegic retreat," he muttered, and munched a piece 
of beef which he lifted from the tin with his 
fingers. 

The spinney on which we had gazed so often 



180 The Great Push 

now retained its unity no longer, the brick houses 
were gone; the lyddite clouds took on strange 
forms amidst the greenery, glided towards one 
another in a graceful waltz, bowed, touched tips, 
retired and paled away weary as it seemed of 
their fantastic dance. Other smoke bands of 
ashen hue intermixed with ragged, bilious-yellow 
fragments of cloud rose in the air and disap- 
peared in the leaden atmosphere. Little wisps 
of vapour like feathers of some gigantic bird de- 
tached themselves from the horrible, diffused 
glare of bursting explosives, floated towards our 
parapet, and the fumes of poisonous gases caused 
us to gasp for breath. The shapelessness of De- 
struction reigned on the hill, a fitting accompani- 
ment to the background of cloudy sky, dull, dark 
and wan. 

Strange contrasts were evoked on the crest, 
monstrous heads rose over the spinney, elephants 
bearing ships, Vikings, bearded -and savage, be- 
ings grotesque and gigantic took shape in the 
smoke and lyddite fumes. 

The terrible assault continued without truce, 
interruption or respite ; our guns scattered broad- 
cast with prodigal indifference their apparently 



Retreat 181 

inexhaustible resources of murder and terror. 
The essence of the bombardment was in the furi- 
ous succession of its blows. In the clamour and 
tumult was the crash and uproar of a vast bub- 
bling cauldron forged and heated by the gods in 
ungodly fury. 

The enemy would reply presently. Through 
the uproar I could hear the premonitory whisper- 
ing of his guns regulating their range and feel- 
ing for an objective. A concussion shell whis- 
tled across the traverse in which I stood and in 
futile rage dashed itself to pieces on the level 
field behind. Another followed, crying like a 
child in pain, and finished its short, drunken 
career by burrowing into the red clay of the 
parados where it failed to explode. It passed 
close to my head, and fear went down into the 
innermost parts of me and held me for a mo- 
ment. ... A dozen shells passed over in the 
next few moments, rushing ahead as if they were 
pursued by something terrible, and burst in the 
open a hundred yards away. Then a livid flash 
lit a near dug-out; lumps of earth, a dozen beams 
and several sandbags changed their locality, and 
a man was killed by concussion. When the body 



182 The Great Push 

was examined no trace of a wound could be seen. 
Up the street of Loos was a clatter and tumult. 
A house was flung to earth, making a noise like 
a statue falling downstairs in a giant's castle; 
iron girders at the coal-mine were wrenched and 
tortured, and the churchyard that bordered our 
trench had the remnants of its headstones flung 
about and its oft muddled graves dug anew by 
the shells. 

The temporary bridge across the trench where 
it intersected the road, made the night before to 
allow ammunition limbers to pass, was blown sky 
high, and two men who sheltered under it were 
killed. Earth, splinters of wood and bits of 
masonry were flung into the trench, and it was 
wise on our part to lie on the floor or press close 
to the parapet. One man, who was chattering 
a little, tried to sing, but became silent when a 
comrade advised him "to hold his row; if the 
Germans heard the noise they might begin shel- 
ling." 

The gods were thundering. At times the 
sound dwarfed me into such infinitesimal little- 
ness that a feeling of security was engendered. 
In the midst of such an uproar and tumult, I 



Retreat 183 

thought that the gods, bent though they were 
upon destruction, would leave such a little atom 
as myself untouched. This for a while would 
give me a self-satisfied confidence in my own in- 
vulnerability. 

At other times my being swelled to the grand 
chorus. I was one with it, at home in thunder. 
I accommodated myself to the Olympian uproar 
and shared in a play that would have delighted 
Jove and Mars. I had got beyond that mean 
where the soul of a man swings like a pendulum 
from fear to indifference, and from indifference 
to fear. In danger I am never indifferent, but 
I find that I can readily adapt myself to the 
moods and tempers of my environment. But 
all men have some restraining influence to help 
them in hours of trial, some principle or some 
illusion. Duty, patriotism, vanity, and dreams 
come to the help of men in the trenches, all illu- 
sions probably, ephemeral and fleeting; but for 
a man who is as ephemeral and fleeting as his 
illusions are, he can lay his back against them 
and defy death and the terrors of the world. 
But let him for a moment stand naked and look 



1 84 The Great Push 

at the staring reality of the terrors that engirt 
him and he becomes a raving lunatic. 

The cannonade raged for three hours, then 
ceased with the suddenness of a stone falling to 
earth, and the ordeal was over. 

As the artillery quietened the men who had 
just come into our trench plucked up courage 
again and took their way back to the front line 
of trenches, keeping well under the cover of the 
houses in Loos. In twenty minutes' time we 
were left to ourselves, nothing remained of those 
who had come our way save their wounded and 
their dead; the former we dressed and carried 
into the dressing-station, the latter we buried 
when night fell. 

The evening came, and the greyish light of the 
setting sun paled away in a western sky, leaden- 
hued and dull. The dead men lying out in the 
open became indistinguishable in the gathering 
darkness. A deep silence settled over the village, 
the roadway and trench, and with the quiet came 
fear. I held my breath. What menace did the 
dark world contain? What threat did the ghostly 
star-shells, rising in air behind the Twin Towers, 
breathe of? Men, like ghosts, stood on the ban- 



Retreat 185 

quettes waiting-, it seemed, for something- to take 
place. There was no talking, no laughter. The 
braziers were still unlit, and the men had not 
eaten for many hours. But none set about to 
prepare a meal. It seemed as if all were afraid 
to move lest the least noise should awake the 
slumbering Furies. The gods were asleep and it 
was unwise to disturb them. . . . 

A limber clattered up the road and rations 
were dumped down at the corner of the village 
street. 

"I 'ope they've brought the rum," somebody 
remarked, and we all laughed boisterously. The 
spell was broken, and already my mate, Bill 
Teake, had applied a match to a brazier and a 
little flame glowed at the corner of a traverse. 
Now was the moment to cook the hen which he 
had shot that morning. 

As he bent over his work, someone coming 
along the trench stumbled against him, and 
nearly threw Bill into the fire. 

" 'Oo the blurry 'ell is that shovin' about," 
spluttered Teake, rubbing the smoke from his 
eyes and not looking round. 

"It's the blurry Colonel of the London Irish," 



186 The Great Push 

a voice replied, and Bill shot up to attention and 
saluted his commanding officer. 

"I'm sorry, sir," he said. 

"It's all right," said the officer. "If I was in 
your place, I might have said worse things." 

Bill recounted the incident afterwards and con- 
cluded by saying, " 'E's a fine bloke, 'e is, our 
CO. I'd do anythink for him now." 



CHAPTER XIII 

A PRISONER OF WAR 

A star-shell holds the sky beyond 
Shell-shivered Loos, and drops 

In million sparkles on a pond 
That lies by Hulluch copse. 

A moment's brightness in the sky, 

To vanish at a breath, 
And die away, as soldiers die 

Upon the wastes of death. 

THERE'LL be some char (tea) in a min- 
ute," said Bill, as he slid over the para- 
pet into the trench. "I've got some cake, 
a tin of sardines and a box of cigars, fat ones." 
"You've been at a dead man's pack," I said. 
"The dead don't need nuffink," said Bill. 
It is a common practice with the troops after 
a charge to take food from the packs of their 
fallen comrades. Such actions are inevitable; 
when crossing the top, men carry very little, for 
too much weight is apt to hamper their move- 
ments. 

187 



1 88 The Great Push 

Transports coming along new roads are liable 
to delay, and in many cases they get blown out 
of existence altogether. When rations arrive, 
if they arrive, they are not up to the usual stand- 
ard, and men would go hungry if death did not 
come in and help them. As it happens, how- 
ever, soldiers feed well after a charge. 

Bill lit a candle in the German dug-out, applied 
a match to a brazier and placed his mess-tin on 
the flames. The dug-out with its flickering taper 
gave me an idea of cosiness, coming in as I did 
from the shell-scarred village and its bleak cob- 
bled streets. To sit down here on a sandbag 
(Bill had used the wooden seats for a fire) where 
men had to accommodate themselves on a pigmy 
scale, was very comfortable and reassuring. The 
light of the candle and brazier cast a spell of 
subtle witchery on the black walls and the bay- 
onets gleaming against the roof, but despite this, 
innumerable shadows lurked in the corners, hold- 
ing some dark council. 

"Ha !" said Bill, red in the face from his exer- 
tions over the fire. "There's the water singin' 
in the mess-tin ; it'll soon be dancin'." 

The water began to splutter merrily as he 






A Prisoner of War 189 

spoke, and he emptied the tea on the tin which he 
lifted from the brazier with his bayonet. From 
his pack he brought forth a loaf and cut it into 
good thick slices. 

"Now some sardines, and we're as comfy as 
kings," he muttered. "We'll 'ave a meal fit for 
a gentleman, any gentleman in the land." 

"What sort of meal is fit for a gentleman?" I 
asked. 

"Oh! a real good proper feed," said Bill. 
"Suthin' that fills the guts." 

The meal was fit for a gentleman indeed; in 
turn we drank the tea from the mess-tin and 
lifted the sardines from the tin with our fingers; 
we had lost our forks as well as most of our 
equipment. 

"What are you goin' to do now?" asked Bill, 
when we had finished. 

"I don't know that there's anything to be done 
in my job," I said. "All the wounded have been 
taken in from here." 

"There's no water to be got," said Bill. 
"There's a pump in the street, but nobody knows 
whether it's poisoned or not. The nearest well 
that's safe to drink from is at Maroc." 



190 The Great Push 

"Is there a jar about?" I asked Bill, and he 
unearthed one from the corner of his jacket. 
"I'll go to Maroc and bring up a jar of water," 
I said. "I'll get back by midnight, if I'm not 
strafed." 

I went out on the road. The night had cleared 
and was now breezy; the moon rode high 
amongst scurrying clouds, the trees in the fields 
were harassed by a tossing motion and leant to- 
wards the village as if seeking to get there. The 
grasses shivered, agitated and helpless, and be- 
hind the Twin Towers of Loos the star-shells 
burst into many-coloured flames and showed like 
a summer flower-garden against the sky. A 
windmill, with one wing intact, stood out, a 
ghostly phantom, on a rise overlooking Hulluch. 

The road to Maroc was very quiet and almost 
deserted; the nightly traffic had not yet begun, 
and the nightly connonade was as yet merely 
fumbling for an opening. The wrecks of the 
previous days were still lying there; long-eared 
mules immobile in the shafts of shattered limbers, 
dead Highlanders with their white legs showing 
wan in the moonlight, boys in khaki with their 
faces pressed tightly against the cobblestones, 



A Prisoner of War 191 

broken wagons, discarded stretchers, and dere- 
lict mailbags with their rain-sodden parcels and 
letters from home. 

Many wounded were still lying out in the fields. 
I could hear them calling for help and groaning. 

"How long had they lain there?" I asked my- 
self. "Two days, probably. Poor devils!" 

I walked along, the water jar knocking against 
my legs. My heart was filled with gloom. "What 
is the meaning of all this?" I queried. "This 
wastage, this hell?" 

A white face peered up at me from a ditch 
by the roadside, and a weak voice whispered, 
"Matey!" 

"What is it, chummy ?" I queried, coming close 
to the wounded man. 

"Can you get me in?" he asked. "I've been 
out for — oh ! I don't know how long," he moaned. 

"Where are you wounded?" I asked. 

"I got a dose of shrapnel, matey," he said. 
"One bullet caught me in the heel, another in the 
shoulder." 

"Has anybody dressed the wounds?" I asked. 

"Aye, aye," he answered. "Somebody did, 
then went off and left me here." 



192 The Great Push 

"Do you think you could grip me tightly round 
the shoulders if I put you on my back?" I said. 
"I'll try and carry you in." 

"We'll give it a trial," said the man in a glad 
voice, and I flung the jar aside and hoisted him 
on my back. 

Already I was worn out with having had no 
sleep for two nights, and the man on my back 
was heavy. For awhile I tried to walk upright, 
but gradually my head came nearer the ground. 

"I can't go any further," I said at last, coming 
to a bank on the roadside and resting my burden. 
"I feel played out. I'll see if I can get any help. 
There's a party of men working over there. I'll 
try and get a few to assist me. 

The man lay back on the grass and did not 
answer. Probably he had lost consciousness. 

A Scotch regiment was at work in the field, 
digging trenches ; I approached an officer, a dark, 
low set man with a heavy black moustache. 

"Could you give me some men to assist me to 
carry in wounded?" I asked. "On each side of 
the road there are dozens " 

"Can't spare any men," said the officer. 
"Haven't enough for the work here." 



A Prisoner of War 193 

"Many of your own countrymen are out 
there," I said. 

"Can't help it," said the man. "We all have 
plenty of work here." 

I glanced at the man's shoulder and saw that 
he belonged to "The Lone Star Crush"; he was 
a second-lieutenant. Second-lieutenants fight 
well, but lack initiative. 

A captain was directing work near at hand, 
and I went up to him. 

"I'm a stretcher-bearer," I said. "The fields 
round here are crowded with wounded who have 
been lying out for ever so long. I should like 
to take them into the dressing-station. Could you 
give me some men to help me?" 

"Do you come from the Highlands?" asked 
the captain. 

"No, I come from Ireland," I said. 

"Oh!" said the officer; then inquired: "How 
many men do you want?" 

"As many as you can spare." 

"Will twenty do?" I was asked. 

I went down the road in charge of twenty men, 
stalwart Highlanders, massive of shoulder and 
thew, and set about collecting the wounded. Two 



194 The Great Push 

doors, a barrow and a light cart were procured, 
and we helped the stricken men on these convey- 
ances. Some men were taken away across the 
Highlanders' shoulders, and some who were not 
too badly hurt limped in with one man to help 
each case. The fellow whom I left lying by the 
roadside was placed on a door and borne away. 

I approached another officer, a major this time, 
and twelve men were handed over to my care; 
again six men were found and finally eight who 
set about their work like Trojans. 

My first twenty returned with wheeled and 
hand stretchers, and scoured the fields near Loos. 
By dawn fifty- three wounded soldiers were taken 
in by the men whom I got to assist me, and I 
made my way back to the trench with a jar 
full of water. Wild, vague, and fragmentary 
thoughts rioted through my mind, and I was con- 
scious of a wonderful exhilaration. I was so 
pleased with myself that I could dance along the 
road and sing with pure joy. Whether the mood 
was brought about by my success in obtaining 
men or saving wounded I could not determine. 
Anyhow, I did not attempt to analyse the mood; 



A Prisoner of War 195 

I was happy and I was alive, with warm blood 
palpitating joyously through my veins. 

I found a full pack lying in the road beside a 
dead mule which lay between the shafts of a 
limber. The animal's ears stuck perkily up like 
birds on a fence. 

In the pack I found an overcoat, a dozen bars 
of chocolate, and a piece of sultana cake. 

I crossed the field. The darkness hung heavy 
as yet, and it was difficult to pick one's way. 
Now I dropped into a shell-hole and fell flat on 
my face, and again my feet got entangled in lines 
of treacherous trip-wire, and I went headlong. 

"Haiti" 

I uttered an exclamation of surprise and fear, 
and stopped short a few inches from the point of 
a bayonet. Staring into the darkness I discerned 
the man who had ordered me to halt. One knee 
was on the ground, and a white hand clutched 
the rifle barrel. I could hear him breathing 
heavily. 

"What's wrong with you, man ?" I asked. 

" 'Oo are yer?" inquired the sentry. 

"A London Irish stretcher-bearer," I said. 



196 The Great Push 

''Why are yer comin' through our lines ?" asked 
the sentry. 

"I'm just going back to the trench," I said. 
"I've been taking a wounded man down to 
Maroc." 

"To where?" asked the man with the bayonet. 

"Oh ! it seems as if you don't know this place," 
I said. "Are you new to this part of the world?" 

The man made no answer, he merely shoved 
his bayonet nearer my breast and whistled softly. 
As if in reply to this signal, two forms took shape 
in the darkness and approached the sentry. 

"What's wrong?" asked one of the newcomers. 

"This 'ere bloke comes up just now," said the 
sentry, pointing the bayonet at my face. " 'E 
began to ask me questions and I 'ad my sus- 
picions, so I whistled." 

"That's right," said one of the newcomers, 
rubbing a thoughtful hand over the bayonet 
which he carried; then he turned to me. "Come 
along wiv us," he said, and, escorted by the two 
soldiers, I made my way across the field towards 
a ruined building which was raked at intervals 
by the German artillery. The field was peopled 
with soldiers lying flat on waterproof sheets, 



A Prisoner of War 197 

and many of the men were asleep. None had 
been there in the early part of the night. 

An officer, an elderly man with a white mous- 
tache, sat under the shade of the building hold- 
ing an electric lamp in one hand and writing in 
a notebook with the other. We came to a halt 
opposite him. 

"What have you here?" he asked, looking at 
one of my captors. 

"We found this man inquiring what regiment 
was here and if it had just come," said the soldier 
on my right who, by the stripes on his sleeve, I 
perceived was a corporal. "He aroused our sus- 
picions and we took him prisoner." 

"What is your name?" asked the officer, turn- 
ing to me. 

I told him. As I spoke a German shell whizzed 
over our heads and burst about three hundred 
yards to rear. The escort and the officer went 
flop to earth and lay there for the space of a 
second. 

"You don't need to duck," I said. "That shell 
burst half a mile away." 

"Is that so?" asked the officer, getting to his 
feet. "I thought it Oh! what's your name?" 



'198 The Great Push 

I told him my name the second time. 

"That's your real name?" he queried. 

I assured him that it was, but my assurance 
was lost, for a second shell rioted overhead, and 
the escort and officer went again flop to the cold 
ground. 

"That shell has gone further than the last," 
I said to the prostrate figures. ''The Germans 
are shelling the road on the right; it's a pastime 
of theirs." 

"Is that so?" asked the officer, getting to his 
feet again. Then, hurriedly, "What's your regi- 
ment?" 

Before I had time to reply, three more pris- 
oners were taken in under escort; I recognised 
Pryor as one of them. He carried a jar of water 
in his hand. 

"Who are these?" asked the officer, 

"They came up to the sentry and asked ques- 
tions about the regiment," said the fresh escort. 
"The sentry's suspicions were aroused and he 
signalled to us, and we came forward and ar- 
rested these three persons." 

The officer looked at the prisoners. 

"What are your names, your regiments?" he 



A Prisoner of War 199 

asked. "Answer quickly. I've no time to waste." 

"May I answer, sir?" I asked. 

"What have you to say?" inquired the officer. 

"Hundreds of men cross this field nightly," 
I said. "Working-parties, ration-fatigues, 
stretcher-bearers and innumerable others cross 
here. They're going up and down all night. By 
the way you duck when a shell passes high above 
you, I judge that you have just come out here. 
If you spend your time taking prisoners all who 
break through your line" (two fresh prisoners 
were brought in as I spoke) "you'll be busy ask- 
ing English soldiers questions till dawn. I hope 
I don't offend you in telling you this." 

The officer was deep in though, for a moment; 
then he said to me, "Thanks very much, you can 
return to your battalion." I walked away. As 
I went off I heard the officer speak to the escorts. 

"You'd better release these men," he said. "I 
find this field is a sort of public thoroughfare." 

A brigade was camped in the field, I discov- 
ered. The next regiment I encountered took me 
prisoner also; but a few shells dropped near at 
hand and took up the attention of my captor for 
a moment. This was an opportunity not to be 



200 The Great Push 

missed ; I simpfy walked away from bondage and 
sought the refuge of my own trench. 

"Thank goodness," I said, as I slid over the 
parapet. "I'll have a few hours' sleep now." 

But there was no rest for me. A few of our 
men, weary of the monotony of the dug-out, had 
crept up to the German trench, where they 
amused themselves by flinging bombs on the 
enemy. As if they had not had enough fighting! 

On my return they were coming back in cer- 
tain stages of demolition. One with a bullet in 
his foot, another with a shell-splinter in his 
cheek, and a third without a thumb. 

These had to be dressed and taken into Maroc 
before dawn. 

A stretcher-bearer at the front has little of 
the excitement of war, and weary hours of dull 
work come his way when the excitement is over. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE CHAPLAIN 



The moon looks down upon a ghost-like figure, 

Delving a furrow in the cold, damp sod, 
The grave is ready, and the lonely digger 
Leaves the departed to their rest and God. 
I shape a little cross and plant it deep 
To mark the dug-out where my comrades sleep. 

I WISH I was in the Ladies' Volunteer 
Corps," said Bill Teake next day, as he 
sat on the fire-step of the trench and looked 
at the illustrated daily which had been used in 
packing a parcel from home. 
"Why?" I asked. 

"They were in bathing last week," said Teake. 
"Their picture is here; fine girls they are, too! 
Oh, blimey !" Bill exclaimed as he glanced at the 
date on the paper. "This 'ere photo was took last 
June." 

"And this is the 28th of September," said 
Pryor. 

We needed a rest now, but we still were in 
201 



202 The Great Push 

the trenches by the village, holding on and hop- 
ing that fresh troops would come up and relieve 
us. 

"Anything about the war in that paper, Bill?" 
someone asked. 

"Nuthin' much," Bill answered. "The Bishop 

of says this is a 'oly war, ; . . Blimey, 

Vs talkin' through 'is 'at. 'Oly, indeed, it's 'oly 
'ell. D'ye mind when 'e came out 'ere, this 'ere 
Bishop, an' told us 'e carried messages from our 
wives, our fathers an' mothers. If I was a mar- 
ried bloke I'd 'ave arst 'im wot did 'e mean by 
takin' messages from my old woman." 

"You interpreted the good man's remarks lit- 
erally," said Pryor, lighting a cigarette. "That 
was wrong. His remarks were bristling with 
metaphors. He spoke as a man of God so that 
none could understand him. He said, as far as 
I can remember, that we could face death without 
fear if we were forgiven men; that it was wise 
to get straight with God, and the blood of Christ 
would wash our sins away, and all the rest of 
it." 

"Stow it, yer bloomin' fool," said Bill Teake. 
"Yer don't know what yer jawin' about. S'pose 



The Chaplain 203 

a bishop 'as got ter make a livin' like ev'ryone 
else; an' 'e's got ter work for it. 'Ere's some- 
thin' about parsons in this paper. One is askin' 
if a man in 'oly Orders should take up arms or 
not." 

"Of course not," said Pryor. "If the parsons 
take up arms, who'll comfort the women at home 
when we're gone?" 

"The slackers will comfort them," some one 
remarked. "I've a great respect for slackers. 
They'll marry our sweethearts when we're dead." 

"We hear nothing of a curates' regiment," I 
said. "In a Holy War young curates should 
lead the way." 

"They'd make damned good bomb throwers," 
said Bill. 

"Would they swear when making a charge?" 
I inquired. 

"They wouldn't beat us at that," said Bill. 

"The holy line would go praying down to die," 
parodied Pryor, and added : "A chaplain may be 
a good fellow, you know." 

"It's a woman's job," said Bill Teake. 
"Blimey ! s'pose women did come out 'ere to com- 
fort us, I wouldn't 'arf go mad with joy. I'd 



204 The Great Push 

give my last fag, I'd give — oh! anything to see 
the face of an English girl now. . . . They say 
in the papers that hactresses come out 'ere. We've 
never seen one, 'ave we?" 

"Actresses never come out here," said Pryor. 
"They give a performance miles back to the 
R.A.M.C., Army Service Corps, and Mechanical 
Transport men, but for us poor devils in the 
trenches there is nothing at all, not even decent 
pay." 

"Wot's the reason that the more clanger men 
go into the less their pay?" asked Teake. "The 
further a man's back from the trenches the more 
'e gets." 

"Mechanical Transport drivers have a trade 
that takes a long apprenticeship," said Pryor. 
"Years perhaps " 

"'Aven't we a trade, too?" asked Bill. "A 
damned dangerous trade, the most dangerous in 
the world?" 

"What's this?" I asked, peeping over the para- 
dos to the road in our rear. "My God ! there's a 
transport wagon going along the road !" 

"Blimey ! you're sprucing," said Bill, peeping 
over; then his eye fell on a wagon drawn by two 



The Chaplain 205 

mules going along the highway. "Oh, the damned 
fools, goin' up that way. They'll not get far." 

The enemy occupied a rise on our right, and a 
machine gun hidden somewhere near the trench 
swept that road all night. The gun was quiet 
all day long; no one ventured along there before 
dusk. A driver sat in front of the wagon, lean- 
ing back a little, a whip in his hand. Beside him 
sat another soldier. . . . Both were going to 
their death, the road at a little distance ahead 
crossed the enemy's trench. 

"They have come the wrong way," I said. 
"They were going to Loos, I suppose, and took 
the wrong turning at the Valle Crossroads. Poor 
devils!" 

A machine gun barked from the rise; we saw 
the driver of the wagon straighten himself and 
look round. His companion pointed a finger at 
the enemy's trench. . . . 

"For Christ's sake get off!" Bill shouted at 
them ; but they couldn't hear him, the wagon was 
more than a quarter of a mile away from our 
trench. 

"Damn it!" exclaimed Bill; "they'll both be 
killed. There!" 



206 The Great Push 

The vehicle halted ; the near-side wheeler shook 
its head, then dropped sideways on the road, and 
kicked out with its hind legs, the other animal 
fell on top of it. The driver's whip went flying 
from his hands, and the man lurched forward 
and fell on top of the mules. For a moment 
he lay there, then with a hurried movement he 
slipped across to the other side of the far animal 
and disappeared. Our eyes sought the other sol- 
dier, but he was gone from sight, probably he had 
been shot off his seat. 

"The damned fools!" I muttered. "What 
brought them up that way ?" 

"Wot's that?" Bill suddenly exclaimed. "See, 
comin' across the fields behind the road! A 
man, a hofficer. . . . Another damned fool, 'im ; 
'e'll get a bullet in 'im." 

Bill pointed with his finger, and we looked. 
Across the fields behind that stretched from the 
road to the ruined village of Maroc we saw for 
the moment a man running towards the wagon. 
We only had a momentary glimpse then. The 
runner suddenly fell flat into a shell-hole and 
disappeared from view. 



The Chaplain 207 

"He's hit," said Pryor. "There, the beastly 
machine gun is going again. Who is he?" 

We stared tensely at the shell-hole. No sign 
of movement. . . . 

" 'E's done in," said Bill. 

Even as he spoke the man who had fallen rose 
and raced forward for a distance of fifty yards 
and flung himself flat again. The machine gun 
barked viciously. . . . 

Then followed a tense moment, and again the 
officer (we now saw that he was an officer) 
rushed forward for several yards and precipi- 
tated himself into a shell-crater. He was draw- 
ing nearer the disabled wagon at every rush. 
The machine gun did not remain silent for a 
moment now ; it spat incessantly at the fields. 

"He's trying to reach the wagon," I said. "I 
don't envy him his job, but, my God, what pluck !" 

" 'Oo is 'e?" asked Bill. " 'E's not arf a brick, 
'ooever 'e is!" 

"I think I know who it is," said Pryor. "It's 
the Roman Catholic chaplain, Father Lane-Fox. 
He's a splendid man. He came over with us in 
the charge, and he helped to carry out the 
wounded till every man was in. Last night when 



208 The Great Push 

we went for our rations he was helping the sani- 
tary squad to bury the dead ; and the enemy were 
shelling all the time. He is the pluckiest man in 
Loos." 

"He wanted to come across in the charge," I 
said, "but the Brigadier would not allow him. 
An hour after we crossed the top I saw him in 
the second German trench. . . . There he is, up 
again!" 

The chaplain covered a hundred yards in the 
next spurt; then he flung himself to earth about 
fifty yards from the wagon. The next lap was 
the last; he reached the wagon and disappeared. 
We saw nothing more of him that day. At night 
when I went down to the dressing-station at 
Maroc I was told how the chaplain had brought 
a wounded transport driver down to the dress- 
ing-station after dusk. The driver had got three 
bullets through his arm, one in nis shoulder, one 
in his foot, and two in the calf of his leg. The 
driver's mate had been killed; a bullet pierced 
his brain. 

The London Irish love Father Lane-Fox; he 
visited the men in the trenches daily, and all 
felt the better for his coming. 



The Chaplain 209 

Often at night the sentry on watch can see a 
dark form between the lines working with a 
shovel and spade burying- the dead. The bullets 
whistle by, hissing of death and terror; now and 
then a bomb whirls in air and bursts loudly; a 
shell screeches like a bird of prey; the hounds of 
war rend the earth with frenzied fangs; but in- 
different to all the clamour and tumult the soli- 
tary digger bends over his work burying the 
dead. 

"It's old Father Lane-Fox," the sentry will 
mutter. "He'll be killed one of these fine days." 



CHAPTER XV 

A LOVER AT LOOS 

The turrets twain that stood in air 
Sheltered a foeman sniper there; 
They found who fell to the sniper's aim, 
A field of death on the field of fame — 
And stiff in khaki the boys were laid, 
To the rifle's toll at the barricade; 
But the quick went clattering through the town, 
Shot at the sniper and brought him down, 
In the town of Loos in the morning. 

THE night was wet, the rain dripped from 
the sandbags and lay in little pools on 
the floor of the trench. Snug in the 
shelter of its keep a machine gun lurked privily, 
waiting for blood. The weapon had an abso- 
lutely impersonal air; it had nothing to do with 
war and the maiming of men. Two men were 
asleep in the bay, sitting on the fire-step and 
snoring loudly. A third man leant over the para- 
pet, his eyes (if they were open) fixed on the 
enemy's trench in front. Probably he was asleep ; 
he stood fixed to his post motionless as a statue. 
T wrapped my overcoat tightly round my body 

210 



A Lover at Loos 211 

and lay down in the slush by a dug-out door. 
The dug-out, a German construction that bur- 
rowed deep in the chalky clay of Loos, was 
crowded with queer, distorted figures. It looked 
as if the dead on the field had been collected and 
shovelled into the place pell-mell. Bill Teake 
lay with his feet inside the shelter, his head and 
shoulders out in the rain. "I couldn't get in no- 
how," he grumbled as I lay down ; "so I arst them 
inside to throw me a 'andful of fleas an' I'd kip 
on the doorstep. Blimey! 'tain't arf a barney; 
mud feathers, and no blurry blanket. There's 
one thing certain, anyhow, that is, in the Army 
you're certain to receive what you get." 

I was asleep immediately, my head on Bill's 
breast, my body in the mud, my clothes sodden 
with rain. In the nights that followed Loos we 
slept anywhere and anyhow. Men lay in the 
mud in the trenches, in the fields, by the road- 
side, on sentry, and out on listening patrols be- 
tween the lines. I was asleep for about five min- 
utes when someone woke me up.. I got to my 
feet, shivering with cold. 

"What's up?" I asked the soldier who had 
shaken me from my slumber. He was standing 



212 The Great Push 

opposite, leaning against the parados and yawn- 
ing. 

"There's a bloke in the next dug-out as 'as got 
wounded," said the man. ' 'E needs someone 
to dress 'is wound an' take 'im to the dressin'- 
station. 'E 'as just crawled in from the fields." 

"All right," I replied. "I'll go along and see 
him." 

A stairway led down to the dug-out ; an officer 
lay asleep at the entrance, and a lone cat lay 
curled up on the second step. At the bottom of 
the stair was a bundle of khaki, moaning feebly. 

"Much hurt?" I asked. 

"Feelin' a bit rotten," replied a smothered 
voice. 

"Where's your wound?" 

"On my left arm." 

"What is your regiment?" I asked, fumbling 
at the man's sleeve. 

"The East Yorks," was the reply to my ques- 
tion. "I was comin' up the trench that's piled 
with dead Germans. I couldn't crawl over them 
all the way, they smelt so bad. I got up and 
tried to walk; then a sniper got me." 

"Where's your regiment?" I asked. 



A Lover at Loos 213 

"I don't know," was the answer. "I got lost 
and I went lookin' for my mates. I came into 
a trench that was crowded with Germans." 

"There's where you got hit," I said. 

"No; they were Germans that wasn't dead," 
came the surprising reply. "They were cooking 
food." 

"When was this?" I asked. 

"Yesterday, just as it was growin' dusk," said 
the wounded man in a weary voice. "Then the 
Germans saw me and they began to shout and 
they caught hold of their rifles. I jumped over 
the trench and made off with bullets whizzin' 
all round me. I tripped and fell into a shell-hole 
and I lay there until it was very dark. Then I 
got into the English trenches. I 'ad a sleep till 
mornin', then I set off to look for my regiment." 

While he was speaking I had lit the candle 
which I always carried in my pocket and placed 
it on the floor of the dug-out. I examined his 
wound. A bullet had gone through the left fore- 
arm, cutting the artery and fracturing the bone ; 
the blood was running down to his finger tips in 
little rivulets. I looked at the face of the patient. 
He was a mere boy, with thoughtful dark eyes, 



214 The Great Push 

a snub nose, high cheekbones; a line of down 
showed on a long upper lip, and a fringe of inno- 
cent curling hairs straggled down his cheeks and 
curved round his chin. He had never used a 
razor. 

I bound up the wound, found a piece of bread 
in my pocket and gave it to him. He ate raven- 
ously. 

"Hungry?" I said. 

" 'As a 'awk," he answered. "I didn't 'ave 
nothin' to-day and not much yesterday." 

"How long have you been out here?" I asked. 

"Only a week," he said. "The regiment 

marched from to here. 'Twasn't 'arf a 

bloomin' sweat. We came up and got into action 
at once." 

"You'll be going home with this wound," I 
said. 

"Will I?" he asked eagerly. 

"Yes," I replied. "A fracture of the forearm. 
It will keep you in England for six months. How 
do you like that?" 

"I'll be pleased," he said. 

"Have you a mother?" I asked. 

"No, but I've a girl." 



A Lover at Loos 215 

"Oh!" 

"Not 'arf I 'aven't," said the youth. "I've 
only one, too. I don't 'old with foolin' about 
with women. One's enough to be gone on, and 
often one is one too many." 

"Very sound reasoning," I remarked sleepily. 
I had sat down on the floor and was dozing off. 

The officer at the top of the stair stirred, shook 
himself and glanced down. 

"Put out that light," he growled. "It's show- 
ing out of the door. The Germans will see it 
and send a shell across." 

I put the candle out and stuck it in my pocket. 

"Are you in pain now ?" I asked the wounded 
boy. 

"There's no pain now," was the answer. "It 
went away when you put the dressing on." 

"Then we'll get along to the dressing-station," 
I said, and we clambered up the stairs into the 
open trench. 

The sky, which was covered with dark grey 
clouds when I came in, had cleared in parts, and 
from time to time the moon appeared like a soft 
beautiful eye. The breezes held converse on the 
sandbags. I could hear the subdued whisper- 



216 The Great Push 

ing of their prolonged consultation. We walked 
along the peopled alley of war, where the quick 
stood on the banquettes, their bayonets reflect- 
ing the brilliance of the moon. When we should 
get as far as the trench where the dead Ger- 
mans were lying we would venture into the open 
and take the high road to Maroc. 

"So you've got a girl," I said to my com- 
panion. 

"I have," he answered. "And she's not 'arf 
a one either. She's a servant in a gentleman's 

'ouse at Y . I was workin' for a baker and 

I used to drive the van. What d'ye work at?" 

"I'm a navvy," I said. "I dig drains and things 
like that." 

"Not much class that sort of work," said the 

baker's boy. "If you come to Y after the 

war I'll try and get yer a job at the baker's. . . . 
Well, I saw this 'ere girl at the big 'ouse and I 
took a fancy to 'er. Are yer much gone on girls ? 
No, neither am I gone on any, only this one. 
She's a sweet thing. I'd read you the last let- 
ter she sent me only it's too dark. Maybe I 
could read it if the moon comes out. Can you 
read a letter by the light of the moon? No. 



A Lover at Loos 217 

. . . Well, I took a fancy to the girl and she fell 
in love with me. 'Er name was Polly Pundy. 
What's your name?" 

"Socrates," I said. 

"My name is plain Brown," the boy said. 
"Jimmy Brown. My mates used to call me 
Tubby because I was stout. Have you got a 
nickname? No. ... I don't like a nickname. 
Neither does Polly." 

"How does your love affair progress?" I 
asked. 

"It's not all 'oney," said the youth, trying to 
evade a projecting sandbag that wanted to nudge 
his wounded arm. "It makes one think. Some- 
how, I like that 'ere girl too well to be 'appy with 
'er. She's too good for me, she is. I used to 
be jealous sometimes; I would strike a man as 
would look at 'er as quick as I'd think of it. 
Sometimes when a young feller passed by and 
didn't look at my Polly I'd be angry too. 'Wasn't 
she good enough for 'im?' I'd say to mvself ; usin' 
'is eyes to look at somethin' else when Polly is 
about " 

"We'll get over the top now," I said, inter- 
rupting Brown. We had come to the trench of 



218 The Great Push 

the dead Germans. In front of us lay a dark 
lump coiled up in the trench; a hand stretched 
out towards us, a wan face looked up at the grey 
sky. . . . "We'll speak of Polly Pundy out in 
the open." 

We crossed the sandbagged parados. The 
level lay in front — grey, solitary, formless. It 
was very quiet, and in the silence of the fields 
where the whirlwind of war had spent its fury 
a few days ago there was a sense of eternal lone- 
liness and sadness. The grey calm night toned 
the moods of my soul into one of voiceless sor- 
row, containing no element of unrest. My mood 
was well in keeping with my surroundings. In 
the distance I could see the broken chimney of 
Maroc coal-mine standing forlorn in the air. 
Behind, the Twin Towers of Loos quivered, 
grimly spectral. 

"We'll walk slowly, Brown," I said to the 
wounded boy. "We'll fall over the dead if we're 
not careful. ... Is Polly Pundy still in the gen- 
tleman's house?" I asked. 

"She's still there," said the boy. "When we 
get married we're goin' to open a little shop." 

"A baker's shop?" I asked. 



A Lover at Loos 219 

"I s'pose so. It's what I know more about 
than anythink else. D'you know anything about 
baking. . . . Nothing? It's not a bad thing to 
turn your 'and to, take my tip for it. . . . Ugh ! 
I almost fell over a dead bloke that time. . . . 
I'm sleepy, aren't you?" 

"By God ! I am sleepy, Jimmy Brown," I mut- 
tered. "I'll try and find a cellar in Maroc when 
I get there and have a good sleep." 

The dressing-station in the ruined village was 
warm and comfortable. An R.A.M.C. orderly 
was busily engaged in making tea for the wound- 
ed who lay crowded in the cellar waiting until 
the motor ambulances came up. Some had waited 
for twenty-four hours. Two doctors were busy 
with the wounded, a German officer with an arm 
gone lay on a stretcher on the floor; a cat was 
asleep near the stove, I could hear it purring. 

Mick Garney, one of our boys, was lying on 
the stretcher near the stove. He was wounded 
in the upper part of the thigh, and was recount- 
ing his adventures in the charge. He had a queer 
puckered little face, high cheekbones, and a lit- 
tle black clay pipe, which he always carried in- 
side his cap on parade and in his haversack on 



220 The Great Push 

the march, that was of course when he was not 
carrying it between his teeth with its bowl turned 
down. Going" across in the charge, Micky ob- 
served some half a dozen Germans rushing out 
from a spinney near Hill 70, and placing a ma- 
chine gun on the Vermelles-Hulluch road along 
which several kilted Highlanders were coming 
at the double. Garney took his pipe out of his 
mouth and looked on. They were daring fel- 
lows, those Germans, coming out into the open 
in the face of a charge and placing their gun in 
position. "I must stop their game," said Mick. 

He lit his pipe, turned the bowl down, then 
lay on the damp earth and, using a dead German 
for a rifle-rest, he took careful aim. At the pull 
of the trigger, one of the Germans fell headlong, 
a second dropped and a third. The three who 
remained lugged the gun back into Loos church- 
yard and placed it behind a tombstone on which 
was the figure of two angels kneeling in front of 
"The Sacred Heart." Accompanied by two 
bombers, Mick Garney found the Germans there. 

"God forgive me!" said Mick, recounting the 
incident to the M.O., "I threw a bomb that blew 
the two angels clean off the tombstone." 



A Lover at Loos 221 

"And the Germans?" asked the M.O. 

"Begorra! they went with the angels." 

... A doctor, a pot-bellied man with a kindly 
face and an innocent moustache, took off Brown's 
bandage and looked at me. 

"How are things going on up there?" he 
asked. 

"As well as might be expected," I replied. 

"You look worn out," said the doctor. 

"I feel worn out," I answered. 

"Is it a fact that the German Crown Prince 
has been captured?" asked the doctor. 

"Who?" 

"The German Crown Prince," said the man. 
"A soldier who has just gone away from here 
vows that he saw Little Willie under escort in 
Loos." 

"Oh, it's all bunkum," I replied. "I suppose 
the man has had too much rum." 

The doctor laughed. 

"Well, sit down and I'll see if I can get you 
a cup of tea," he said in a kindly voice, and at 
his word I sat down on the floor. I was con- 
scious of nothing further until the following 
noon. I awoke to find myself in a cellar, wrapped 



222 The Great Push 

in blankets and lying- on a stretcher. I went 
upstairs and out into the street and found that 
I had been sleeping in the cellar of the house ad- 
joining the dressing-station. 

I called to mind Jimmy Brown, his story of 
Polly Pundy; his tale of passion told on the field 
of death, his wound and his luck. A week in 
France only, and now going back again to Eng- 
land, to Polly Pundy, servant in a gentleman's 
house. He was on his way home now probably, 
a wound in his arm and dreams of love in his 
head. You lucky devil, Jimmy Brown! . . . 
Anyhow, good fortune to you. . . . But mean- 
while it was raining and I had to get back to 
the trenches. 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE RATION PARTY 



"In the Army you are certain to receive what you get." — 
Trench Proverb. 

A RIFLEMAN lay snoring in the soft slush 
on the floor of the trench, his arms 
doubled under him, his legs curved up 
so that the knees reached the man's jaw. As 
I touched him he shuffled a little, turned on his 
side, seeking a more comfortable position in the 
mud, and fell asleep again. A light glowed in 
the dug-out and someone in there was singing in 
a low voice a melancholy ragtime song. No doubt 
a fire was now lit in the corner near the wall, 
my sleeping place, and Bill Teake was there pre- 
paring a mess-tin of tea. 

The hour was twilight, the hour of early stars 
and early star-shells, of dreams and fancies and 
longings for home. It is then that all objects 
take on strange shapes, when every jutting 

traverse becomes alive with queer forms, the stiff 

223 



224 The Great Push 

sandbag becomes a gnome, the old dug-out, lean- 
ing wearily on its props, an ancient crone, spirits 
lurk in every nook and corner of shadows; the 
sleep-heavy eyes of weary men see strange visions 
in the dark alleys of war. I entered the dug- 
out. A little candle in a winding sheet flared 
dimly in a niche which I had cut in the wall a 
few days previous. Pryor was sitting on the 
floor, his hands clasped round his knees, and he 
was looking into infinite distances. Bill Teake 
was there, smoking a cigarette and humming his 
ragtime tune. Two other soldiers were there, 
lying on the floor and probably asleep. One was 
covered with a blanket, but his face was bare, 
a sallow face with a blue, pinched nose, a weak, 
hairy jaw, and an open mouth that gaped at 
the rafters. The other man lay at his feet, 
breathing heavily. No fire was lit as yet. 

"No rations have arrived?" I asked. 

"No blurry rations," said Bill. "Never no 
rations now, nethink now at all. I 'ad a loaf 
yesterday and I left it in my pack in the trench, 
and when I come to look for't, it was gone." 

"Who took it?" I asked. 

"Ask me another!" said Bill with crushing 



The Ration Party 225 

irony. " 'Oo ate the first bloater ? Wot was the 
size of my great grandmuvver's boots when she 
was twenty-one? But '00 pinched my loaf? and 
men in this crush that would pinch a dead mouse 
from a blind kitten ! Yer do ask some questions, 
Pat!" 

"Bill and I were having a discussion a mo- 
ment ago," said Pryor, interrupting. "Bill main- 
tains that the Army is not an honourable insti- 
tution, and that no man should join it. If he 
knew as much as he know? now he would never 
have come into it. I was saying that " 

"Oh, you were talkin' through yer ''at, that's 
wot you were," said Bill. "The harmy a place 
of honour indeed! 'Oo wants to join it now? 
Nobody as far as I can see. The married men 
say to the single men, 'You go and fight, you 
slackers! We'll stay at 'ome; we 'ave our old 
women to keep!' Sayin' that, the swine!" said 
Bill angrily. "Them thinkin' that the single men 
'ave nothin' to do but to go out and fight for 
other men's wives. Blimey! that ain't 'arf 
cheek!" 

"That doesn't alter the fact that our cause is 
just," said Pryor. "The Lord God of Hosts is 



226 The Great Push 

with us yet, and the Church says that all men 
should fight — except clergymen." 

"And why shouldn't them parsons fight?" 
asked Bill. "They say, 'Go and God bless you' 
to us, and then they won't fight themselves. It's 
against the laws of God, they say. If we 'ad 
all the clergymen, all the M.P.'s, the Kaiser and 
Crown Prince, Krupp and von Kluck, and all 
these 'ere blokes wot tell us to fight, in these 'ere 
trenches for a week, the war would come to an 
end very sudden." 

Pryor rose and tried to light a fire. Wood 
was very scarce, the paper was wet and refused 
to burn. 

"No fire to-night," said Bill in a despondent 
voice. "Two pieces of wood on a brazier is no 
go; they look like two crossbones on a 'earse." 

"Are rations coming up to-night?" I asked. 
The ration wagons had been blown to pieces on 
the road the night before and we were very hun- 
gry now. 

"I suppose our grub will get lost this night 
again," said Bill. "It's always the way. I wish 
I was shot like that bloke there." 

"Where?" I asked. 



The Ration Party 227 

"There," answered Bill, pointing at the man 
with the blue and pinched face who lay in the 
corner. " 'E's gone West." 

"No," I said. "He's asleep!" 

" 'E'll not get up at revelly, 'im," said Bill. 
" 'E's out of the doin's for good. 'E got wounded 
at the door and we took 'im in. 'E died." . . . 

I approached the prostrate figure, examined 
him, and found that Bill spoke the truth. 

"A party has gone down to Maroc for ra- 
tions," said Pryor, lighting a cigarette and puf- 
fing the smoke up towards the roof. "They'll 
be back by eleven, I hope. That's if they're not 
blown to pieces. A lot of men got hit going 
down last night, and then there was no grub 
when they got to the dumping ground." 

"This man," I said, pointing to the snoring 
figure on the ground. "He is all right?" 

"Dead beat only," said Pryor; "but otherwise 
safe. I am going to have a kip now if I can." 

So saying he bunched up against the wall, leant 
his elbow on the brazier that refused to burn, 
and in a few seconds he was fast asleep. Bill 
and I lay down together, keeping as far away 



228 The Great Push 

as we could from the dead man, and did our best 
to snatch a few minutes' repose. 

We nestled close to the muddy floor across 
which the shadows of the beams and sandbags 
crept in ghostly play. Now the shadows bunched 
into heaps, again they broke free, lacing and 
interlacing as the lonely candle flared from its 
niche in the wall. 

The air light and rustling was full of the scent 
of wood smoke from a fire ablaze round the 
traverse, of the smell of mice, and the soft sounds 
and noises of little creeping things. 

Shells travelling high in air passed over our 
dug-out; the Germans were shelling the Loos 
Road and the wagons that were coming along 
there. Probably that one just gone over had hit 
the ration wagon. The light of the candle failed 
and died: the night full of depth and whisper- 
ing warmth swept into the dug-out, cloaked the 
sleeping and the dead, and settled, black and 
ghostly, in the corners. I fell asleep. 

Bill tugging at my tunic awoke me from a 
horrible nightmare. In my sleep I had gone with 
the dead man from the hut out into the open. 
He walked with me, the dead man, who knew 



The Ration Party 229 

that he was dead. I tried to prove to him that 
it was not quite the right and proper thing to 
do, to walk when life had left the body. But 
he paid not a sign of heed to my declamation. 
In the open space between our line and that of 
the Germans the dead man halted and told me 
to dig a grave for him there. A shovel came 
into my hand by some strange means and I set 
to work with haste; if the Germans saw me there 
they would start to shell me. The sooner I got 
the job done the better. 

"Deep ?" I asked the man when I had laboured 
for a space. There was no answer. I looked up 
at the place where he stood to find the man gone. 
On the ground was a short white stump of bone. 
This I was burying when Bill shook me. 

"Rations 'ave come, Pat," he said. 

"What's the time now?" I asked, getting to 
my feet and looking round. A fresh candle had 
been lit; the dead man still lay in the corner, 
but Pryor was asleep in the blanket. 

"About midnight," said my mate, "or maybe a 
bit past. Yer didn't 'arf 'ave a kip." 

"I was dreaming," I said. "Thought I was 
burying a man between the German lines." 



230 The Great Push 

"You'll soon be burying a man or two," said 
Bill. 

"Who are to be buried?" I asked. 

"The ration party." 

"What!" 

"The men copped it comin' up 'ere," said Bill. 
"Three of 'em were wiped out complete. The 
others escaped. I went out with Murney and 
O'Meara and collared the grub. I'm just goin' 
to light a fire now." 

"I'll help you," I said, and began to cut a 
fresh supply of wood which had come from no- 
where in particular with my clasp-knife. 

A fire was soon burning merrily, a mess-tin 
of water was singing, and Bill had a few slices 
of bacon on the mess-tin lid ready to go on the 
brazier when the tea came off. 

"This is wot I call comfy," he said. "Gawd, 
I'm not 'arf 'ungry. I could eat an 'oss." 

I took off the tea, Bill put the lid over the 
flames and in a moment the bacon was sizzling. 

"Where's the bread, Bill?" I asked. 

"In that there sandbag," said my mate, point- 
ing to a bag beside the door. 

I opened the bag and brought out the loaf. It 



The Ration Party 231 

felt very moist. I looked at it and saw that it 
was coloured dark red. 

"What's this?" I asked. 

"Wot?" queried Bill, kicking Pryor to waken 
him. 

"This bread has a queer colour," I said. "See 
it, Pryor." 

Pryor gazed at it with sleep-heavy eyes. 

"It's red," he muttered. 

"Its colour is red," I said. 

"Red," said Bill. "Well, we're damned 'ungry 
any'ow. I'd eat it if it was covered with rat 
poison." 

"How did it happen?" I asked. 

"Well, it's like this," said Bill. "The bloke 
as was carryin' it got 'it in the chest. The ra- 
tions fell all round 'im and 'e fell on top of 'em. 
That's why the loaf is red." 

We were very hungry, and hungry men are 
not fastidious. 

We made a good meal. 

When we had eaten we went out and buried 
the dead. 



CHAPTER XVII 

MICHAELMAS EVE 

It's "Carry on !" and "Carry on !" and "Carry on I" all day, 

And when we cannot carry on, they'll carry us away 

To slumber sound beneath the ground, pore beggars dead 

and gone, 
'Til Gabriel shouts on Judgment Day, "Get out and carry 

on!" 

ON Michaelmas Eve things were quiet ; the 
big guns were silent, and the only sign of 
war was in the star-shells playing near 
Hill 70 ; the rifles pinging up by Bois Hugo, and 
occasional clouds of shrapnel incense which the 
guns offered to the god they could not break, the 
Tower Bridge of Loos. We had not been re- 
lieved yet, but we hoped to get back to Les Brebis 
for a rest shortly. The hour was midnight, and 
I felt very sleepy. The wounded in our sector 
had been taken in, the peace of the desert was 
over the level land and its burden of unburied 
dead. I put on my overcoat, one that I had 
just found in a pack on the roadway, and went 

into a barn which stood near our trench. The 

232 



Michaelmas Eve 233 

door of the building hung on one hinge. I pulled 
it off, placed it on the floor, and lay on it. With 
due caution I lit a cigarette, and the smoke 
reeked whitely upwards to the skeleton roof 
which the shell fire had stripped of nearly all its 
tiles. 

My body was full of delightful pains of weari- 
ness, my mind was full of contentment. The 
moon struggled through a rift in the clouds and 
a shower of pale light streamed through the 
chequered framework overhead. The tiles which 
had weathered a leaden storm showed dark 
against the sky, queer shadows played on the 
floor, and in the subdued moonlight, strange, un- 
expected contrasts were evoked. In the corners, 
where the shadows took on definite forms, there 
was room for the imagination to revel in. The 
night of ruination with its soft moonlight and 
delicate shading had a wonderful fascination of 
its own. The enemy machine gun, fumbling for 
an opening, chirruped a lullaby as its bullets pat- 
tered against the wall. I was under the spell of 
an enchanting poem. "How good, how very good 
it is to be alive," I said. 

My last remembrance before dozing off was 



234 The Great Push 

of the clatter of picks and shovels on the road 
outside. The sanitary squad was at work bury- 
ing the dead. I fell asleep. 

I awoke to find somebody tugging at my el- 
bow and to hear a voice which I recognised as 
W.'s, saying, "It's only old Pat." 

"What's wrong?" I mumbled, raising myself 
on my elbow and looking round. The sanitary 
diggers were looking at me, behind them the 
Twin Towers stood out dark against the moon- 
light. Girders, ties and beams seemed to have 
been outlined with a pen dipped in molten silver. 
I was out in the open. 

"This isn't half a go," said one of the men, a 
mate of mine, who belonged to the sanitary 
squad. "We thought you were a dead 'un. We 
dug a deep grave, put two in and there was room 
for another. Then L. said that there was a bloke 
lying on a door inside that house, and in we 
goes and carries you out — door and all. You're 
just on the brink of your grave now." 

I peeped over the side and down a dark hole 
with a bundle of khaki and a white face at the 
bottom. 






Michaelmas Eve 235 

"I refuse to be buried," I muttered, and took 
up my bed and walked. 

As I lay down again in the building which I 
had left to be buried, I could hear my friends 
laughing. It was a delightful joke. In a moment 
I was sound asleep. 

I awoke with a start to a hell-riot of creaking 
timbers and tiles falling all around me. I got 
to my feet and crouched against the wall shud- 
dering, almost paralyzed with fear. A tense sec- 
ond dragged by. The tiles ceased to fall and I 
looked up at the place where the roof had been. 
But the roof was gone; a shell had struck the 
centre beam, raised the whole construction as a 
lid is raised from a teapot, and flung it over into 
the street. ... I rushed out into the trench in 
undignified haste, glad of my miraculous escape 
from death, and stumbled across Bill Teake as 
I fell into the trench. 

"Wot's wrong with yer, mate?" he asked. 

I drew in a deep breath and was silent for a 
moment. I was trying to regain my composure. 

"Bill," I replied, "this is the feast of St. Mi- 
chael and All Angels. I've led such an exemplary 
life that St. Michael and All Angels in Para- 



236 The Great Push 

dise want me to visit them. They caused the 
sanitary squad to dig my grave to-night, and 
when I refused to be buried they sent a shell 
along to strafe me. I escaped. I refuse to be 
virtuous from now until the end of my days." 

" 'Ave a drop of rum, Pat," said Bill, uncork- 
ing a bottle. 

"Thank you, Bill," I said, and drank. I wiped 
my lips. 

"Are we going to be relieved?" I asked. 

"In no time," said Bill. "The 22nd London 
are coming along the trench now. We're going 
back to Les Brebis." 

"Good," I said. 

" 'Ave another drop of rum," said Bill. 

He left me then and I began to make up my 
pack. It was useless for me to wait any longer. 
I would go across the fields to Les Brebis. 

The night grew very dark, and heavy clouds 
gathered overhead. The nocturnal rustling of 
the field surrounded me, the dead men lay every- 
where and anyhow, some head-downwards in 
shell-holes, others sitting upright as they were 
caught by a fatal bullet when dressing their 
wounds. Many were spread out at full length, 



Michaelmas Eve 237 

their legs close together, their arms extended, 
crucifixes fashioned from decaying flesh wrapped 
in khaki. Nature, vast and terrible, stretched 
out on all sides; a red star-shell in the misty 
heavens looked like a lurid wound dripping with 
blood. 

I walked slowly, my eyes fixed steadily on the 
field ahead, for I did not desire to trip over the 
dead, who lay everywhere. As I walked a shell 
whistled over my head and burst against the 
Twin Towers, and my gaze rested on the explo- 
sion. At that moment I tripped on something 
soft and went headlong across it. A dozen rats 
slunk away into the darkness as I fell. I got to 
my feet again and looked at the dead man. The 
corpse was a mere condensation of shadows with 
a blurred though definite outline. It was a re- 
mainder and a reminder; a remnant of clashing 
steel, of rushing figures, of loud-voiced impreca- 
tions — of war, a reminder of mad passion, of or- 
ganised hatred, of victory and defeat. 

Engirt with the solitude and loneliness of the 
night it wasted away, though no waste could al- 
ter it now; it was a man who was not; hence- 
forth it would be that and that alone. 



238 The Great Push 

For the thing there was not the quietude of 
death and the privacy of the tomb, it was out- 
cast from its kind. Buffeted by the breeze, bat- 
tered by the rains it rotted in the open. Worms 
feasted on its entrails, slugs trailed silverly over 
its face, and lean rats gnawed at its flesh. The 
air was full of the thing, the night stank with 
its decay. 

Life revolted at that from which life was gone, 
the quick cast it away for it was not of them. 
The corpse was one with the mystery of the night, 
the darkness and the void. 

In Loos the ruined houses looked gloomy by 
day, by night they were ghastly. A house is a 
ruin when the family that dwelt within its walls 
is gone; but by midnight in the waste, how hor- 
rible looks the house of flesh from which the 
soul is gone. We are vaguely aware of what has 
happened when we look upon the tenantless home, 
but man is stricken dumb when he sees the ten- 
antless body of one of his kind. I could only 
rtare at the corpse until I felt that my eyes were 
3 glassy as those on which I gazed. The stiff- 
of the dead was communicated to my being, 



Michaelmas Eve 239 

the silence was infectious; I hardly dared to 
breathe. 

"This is the end of all the mad scurry and 
rush," I said. "What purpose does it serve? 
And why do I stand here looking at the thing?" 
There were thousands of dead around Loos; 
fifty thousand perhaps, scattered over a few 
square miles of country, unburied. Some men, 
even, might still be dying. 

A black speck moved along the earth a few 
yards away from me, slunk up to the corpse and 
disappeared into it, as it were. Then another 
speck followed, and another. The rats were re- 
turning to their meal. 

The bullets whistled past my ears. The Ger- 
mans had a machine gun and several fixed rifles 
trained on the Valle cross-roads outside Loos, 
and all night long these messengers of death 
sped out to meet the soldiers coming up the road 
and chase the soldiers going down. 

The sight of the dead man and the rats had 
shaken me ; I felt nervous and could not restrain 
myself from looking back over my shoulder at 
intervals. I had a feeling that something was 
following me, a Presence, vague and terrible, a 



240 The Great Push 

spectre of the midnight and the field of death. 

I am superstitious after a fashion, and I fear 
the solitude of the night and the silent obscurity 
of the darkness. 

Once, at Vermelles, I passed through a de- 
serted trench in the dusk. There the parapet and 
parados were fringed with graves, and decrepit 
dug-outs leant wearily on their props like hags 
on crutches. A number of the dug-outs had 
fallen in, probably on top of the sleeping occu- 
pants, and no one had time to dig the victims 
out. Such things often happen in the trenches, 
and in wet weather when the sodden dug-outs 
cave in, many men are buried alive. 

The trench wound wayward as a river through 
the fields, its traverse steeped in shadow, its bays 
full of mystery. As I walked through the maze 
my mind was full of presentiments of evil. I was 
full of expectation, everything seemed to be lead- 
ing up to happenings weird and uncanny, things 
which would not be of this world. The trench 
was peopled with spectres; soldiers, fully armed, 
stood on the fire-steps, their faces towards the 
enemy. I could see them as I entered a bay, 
but on coming closer the phantoms died away. 



Michaelmas Eve 241 

The boys in khaki were tilted sandbags heaped 
on the banquette, the bayonets splinters of wood 
sharply defined against the sky. As if to heighten 
the illusion, torn ground-sheets, hanging from the 
parados, made sounds like travelling shells, as 
the breezes caught them and brushed them 
against the wall. 

I went into a bay to see something dark grey 
and shapeless bulked in a heap on the fire-step. 
Another heap of sandbags I thought. But no! 
In the darkness of the weird locality realities 
were exaggerated and the heap which I thought 
was a large one was in reality very small; a 
mere soldier, dead in the trench, looked enor- 
mous in my eyes. The man's bayonet was 
pressed between his elbow and side, his head 
bending forward almost touched the knees, and 
both the man's hands were clasped across it as 
if for protection. A splinter of shell which he 
stooped to avoid must have caught him. He now 
was the sole occupant of the deserted trench, 
this poor, frozen effigy of fear. The trench was 
a grave unfilled. ... I scrambled over the top 
and took my way across the open towards my 
company. 



242 The Great Push 

Once, at midnight, I came through the desertt.I 
village of Bully-Grenay, where every house was 
built exactly like its neighbour. War has played 
havoc with the pattern, however, most of the 
houses are shell-stricken, and some are levelled 
to the ground. The church stands on a little 
knoll near the coal-mine, and a shell has dug a 
big hole in the floor of the aisle. A statue 
of the Blessed Virgin sticks head downwards in 
the hole; how it got into this ludicrous position 
is a mystery. 

The Germans were shelling the village as I 
came through. Shrapnel swept the streets and 
high explosives played havoc with the mine; I 
had no love for a place in such a plight. In front 
of me a limber was smashed to pieces, the driver 
was dead, the offside wheeler dead, the nearside 
wheeler dying and kicking its mate in the belly 
w r ith vicious hooves. On either side of me were 
deserted houses with the doors open and shadows 
brooding in the interior. The cellars would af- 
ford secure shelter until the row was over, but 
I feared the darkness and the gloom more than 
I feared the shells in the open street. When the 
splinters swept perilously near to my head I made 



Michaelmas Eve 243 

instinctively for an open door, but the shadows 
seemed to thrust me back with a powerful hand. 
To save my life I would not go into a house and 
seek refuge in the cellars. 

I fear the solitude of the night, but I can never 
ascertain what it is I fear in it. I am not par- 
ticularly interested in the supernatural, and 
spiritualism and table-rapping is not at all to my 
taste. In a crowded room a spirit in my way 
of thinking loses its dignity and power to im- 
press, and at times I am compelled to laugh at 
those who believe in manifestations of disem- 
bodied spirits. 

Once, at Givenchy, a soldier in all seriousness 
spoke of a strange sight which he had seen. 
Givenchy Church has only one wall standing, and 
a large black crucifix with its nailed Christ is 
fixed to this wall. From the trenches on a moon- 
light night it is possible to see the symbol of sor- 
row with its white figure which seems to keep 
eternal watch over the line of battle. The sol- 
dier of whom I speak was on guard; the night 
was very clear, and the enemy were shelling 
Givenchy Church. A splinter of shell knocked 
part of the arm of the cross away. The soldier 



244 The Great Push 

on watch vowed that he saw a luminous halo 
settle round the figure on the Cross. It detached 
itself from its nails, came down to the ground, 
and put the fallen wood back to its place. Then 
the Crucified resumed His exposed position again 
on the Cross. It was natural that the listeners 
should say that the sentry was drunk. 

It is strange how the altar of Givenchy Church 
and its symbol of Supreme Agony has escaped 
destruction. Many crosses in wayside shrines 
have been untouched though the locality in which 
they stand is swept with eternal artillery fire. 

But many have fallen; when they become one 
with the rubble of a roadway their loss is unno- 
ticed. It is when they escape destruction that 
they become conspicuous. They are like the 
faithful in a storm at sea who prayed to the 
Maria del Stella and weathered the gale. Their 
good fortune became common gossip. But gos- 
sip, historical and otherwise, is mute upon those 
who perished. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

BACK AT LOOS 

The dead men lay on the shell-scarred plain, 
Where death and the autumn held their reign — 
Like banded ghosts in the heavens grey 
The smoke of the conflict died away. 
The boys whom I knew and loved were dead, 
Where war's grim annals were writ in red, 
In the town of Loos in the morning. 

THE ruined village lay wrapped in the 
silence of death. It was a corpse over 
which the stars came out like funeral 
tapers. The star-shells held the heaven behind 
Loos, forming into airy constellations which van- 
ished at a breath. The road, straight as an ar- 
row, pitted with shell-holes and bearing an in- 
congruous burden of dead mules, dead men, 
broken limbers, and vehicles of war, ran in front 
of us straight up to and across the firing line 
into the France that was not France. Out there 
behind the German lines were the French vil- 
lagers and peasantry, fearing any advance on 

our part, much more even than the Germans 

245 



246 The Great Push 

feared it, even as much as the French behind 
our lines feared a German advance. 

The indefatigable shrapnel kills impartially; 
how many civilians in Loos and Lens have fallen 
victims to the furious 75's? In France the Al- 
lies fight at a disadvantage; a few days previ- 
ously a German ammunition depot had been 
blown up in Lille, and upwards of a hundred 
French civilians were killed. How much more 
effective it would have been if the civilians had 
been Germans! 

Our battalion was returning to the trenches 

after a fortnight's rest in H , a village in 

the rear. We had handed over the trench taken 
from the Germans to the 22nd London Regiment 

before leaving for H . In H we got a 

new equipment, fresh clothing, good boots and 
clean shirts; now we were ready for further 
work in active warfare. 

We were passing through Loos on the way to 
the trenches. What a change since we had been 
there last! The adaptive French had taken the 
village in hand; they had now been there for 
three days. Three days, and a miracle had been 
accomplished. Every shell-crater in the street 



Back at Loos 247 

was filled up with dead horses, biscuit tins, sand- 
bag's and bricks, and the place was made easy 
for vehicle traffic. Barricades, behind which ma- 
chine guns lurked privily, were built at the main 
crossings. An old bakery was patched up and 
there bread was baked for the soldiers. In a 
cellar near the square a neat wine-shop displayed 
tempting bottles which the thirsty might pur- 
chase for a few sous. 

The ease with which the French can accom- 
modate themselves to any change has been a con- 
stant source of wonder to me. In Les Brebis 
I saw roofs blown off the village houses at dawn, 
at noon I saw the natives putting them on again ; 
at Cuinchy I saw an ancient woman selling cafe- 
au-lait at four sous a cup in the jumble of bricks 
which was once her home. When the cow which 
supplied the milk was shot in the stomach the 
woman still persisted in selling coffee, cafe noir, 
at three sous a cup. When a civilian is killed at 
Mazingarbe the children of the place sell the 
percussion cap of the death-dealing shell for half 
a franc. Once when I was there an old crone 
was killed when washing her feet at a street 
pump. A dozen or more percussion caps were 



248 The Great Push 

sold that day ; every gargon in the neighbourhood 
claimed that the aluminium nose-cap in his pos- 
session was the one that did the foul deed. When 
I was new to France I bought several of these 
ghastly relics, but in a few weeks I was out try- 
ing to sell. There was then, however, a slump 
in nose-caps, and I lost heavily. 

The apt process of accommodation which these 
few incidents may help to illustrate is peculiar 
to the French; they know how to make the best 
of a bad job and a ruined village. They paved 
the streets with dead horses; drew bread from 
the bricks and stored wine in the litter that was 
Loos. That is France, the Phoenix that rises re- 
splendent from her ashes; France that like her 
Joan of Arc will live for ever because she has 
suffered ; France, a star, like Rabelais, which can 
cast aside a million petty vices when occasion re- 
quires it and glow with eternal splendour, the 
wonder of the world. 

The Minister Fusiliers held a trench on the 
left of Loos and they had suffered severely. They 
had been in there for eight days, and the big 
German guns were active all the time. In one 
place the trench was rilled in for a distance of 



Back at Loos 249 

three hundred yards. Think of what that means. 
Two hundred men manned the deep, cold alley 
dug in the clay. The shells fell all round the 
spot, the parados swooped forward, the parapet 
dropped back, they were jaws which devoured 
men. The soldiers went in there, into a grave 
that closed like a trap. None could escape. 
When we reopened the trench, we reopened a 
grave and took out the dead. 

The night we came to relieve those who re- 
mained alive was clear and the stars stood out 
cold and brilliant in the deep overhead; but a 
grey haze enveloped the horizon, and probably 
we would have rain before the dawn. The 
trenches here were dug recently, make-shift al- 
leys they were, insecure and muddy, lacking dug- 
outs, fire-places, and every accommodation that 
might make a soldier's life bearable. They were 
fringed with dead; dead soldiers in khaki lay on 
the reverse slope of the parapet, their feet in the 
grass, their heads on the sandbags; they lay be- 
hind the parados, on the levels, in the woods, 
everywhere. Upwards of eleven thousand Eng- 
lish dead littered the streets of Loos and the coun- 



250 The Great Push 

try round after the victory, and many of these 
were unburied yet. 

A low-lying country, wet fields, stagnant 
drains, shell-rent roads, ruined houses, dead men, 
mangled horses. To us soldiers this was the 
only apparent result of the battle of Loos, a 
battle in which we fought at the start, a battle 
which was not yet ended. We knew nothing of 
the bigger issues of the fight. We had helped 
to capture several miles of trenches and a few 
miles of country. We brought our guns forward, 
built new emplacements, to find that the enemy 
knew his abandoned territory so well that he 
easily located the positions of our batteries. Be- 
fore the big fight our guns round Les Brebis 
and Maroc were practically immune from obser- 
vation; now they were shelled almost as soon 
as they were placed. We thrust our salient for- 
ward like a duck's bill, and our trenches were 
subject to enfilade fire and in some sectors our 
men were even shelled from the rear. 

Our plan of attack was excellent, our prepara- 
tions vigorous and effective, as far as they went. 
Our artillery blew the barbed wire entanglements 
of the first German trench to pieces, at the sec 



Back at Loos 251 

ond trench the wire was practically untouched. 

Our regiment entered this latter trench where 
it runs along in front of Loos. We followed on 
the heels of the retreating Germans. Our at- 
tack might have been more effective if the real 
offensive began here, if fresh troops were flung 
at the disorganised Germans when the second 
trench was taken. Lens might easily have fallen 
into our hands. 

The fresh divisions coming up on Sunday and 
Monday had to cope with the enemy freshly but 
strongly entrenched on Hill 70. The Guards Di- 
vision crossed from Maroc in open order on the 
afternoon of Sunday, the 26th, and was greeted 
by a furious artillery fire which must have 
worked great havoc amongst the men. I saw the 
advance from a distance. I think it was the most 
imposing spectacle of the fight. What struck me 
as very strange at the time was the Division 
crossing the open when they might have got into 
action by coming along through the trenches. 
On the level the men were under observation all 
the time. The advance, like that of the London 
Irish, was made at a steady pace. 

What grand courage it is that enables men 



252 The Great Push 

to face the inevitable with untroubled front. 
Despite the assurance given by the Higher Com- 
mand about the easy task in front of us, the 
boys of our regiment, remembering Givenchy and 
Richebourg, gave little credence to the assurance; 
they anticipated a very strong resistance, in fact 
none of them hoped to get beyond the first Ger- 
man trench. 

It is easy to understand why men are eager 
"to get there," as the favourite phrase says, once 
they cross the parapet of the assembly trench. 
"There," the enemy's line, is comparatively safe, 
and a man can dodge a blow or return one. The 
open offers no shelter; between the lines luck 
alone preserves a man; a soldier is merely a 
naked babe pitted against an armed gladiator. 
Naturally he wants "to get there" with the great- 
est possible speed; in the open he is beset with 
a thousand dangers, in the foeman's trench he 
is confronted with but one or two. 

I suppose "the desire to get there," which is 
so often on the lips of the military correspondent, 
is as often misconstrued. The desire to get fin- 
ished with the work is a truer phrase. None 



Back at Loos 253 

wish to go to a dentist, but who would not be 
rid of an aching tooth ? 

The London Irish advance was more remark- 
able than many have realized. The instinct of 
self-preservation is the strongest in created be- 
ings, and here we see hundreds of men whose 
premier consideration was their own personal 
safety moving forward to attack with the non- 
chalance of a church parade. Perhaps the men 
who kicked the football across were the most 
nervous in the affair. Football is an exciting 
pastime, it helped to take the mind away from 
the crisis ahead, and the dread anticipation of 
death was forgotten for the time being. But I 
do not think for a second that the ball was 
brought for that purpose. 

Although w r e captured miles of trenches, the at- 
tack in several parts stopped on open ground 
where we had to dig ourselves in. This necessi- 
tated much labour and afforded little comfort. 
Dug-outs there were none, and the men who oc- 
cupied the trenches after the fight had no shelter 
from shell-splinters and shrapnel. From trenches 
such as these we relieved all who were left of 
the Munster Fusiliers. 



254 The Great Push 

The Germans had placed some entanglements 
in front of their position, and it was consid- 
ered necessary to examine their labours and see 
what they had done. If we found that their wire 
entanglement was strong and well fastened our 
conclusions would be that the Germans were not 
ready to strike, that their time at the moment 
was devoted to safeguarding themselves from at- 
tack. If, on the other hand, their wires were 
light, fragile and easily removed, we might guess 
that an early offensive on our lines would take 
place. Lieutenant Y. and two men went across 
to have a look at the enemy's wires; we busied 
ourselves digging a deeper trench ; as a stretcher- 
bearer I had no particular work for the moment, 
so I buried a few of the dead who lay on the 
field. 

On our right was a road which crossed our 
trench and that of the Germans, a straight road 
lined with shell-scarred poplars running true as 
an arrow into the profundities of the unknown. 
The French occupied the trench on our right, 
and a gallant Porthos (I met him later) built a 
barricade of sand-bags on the road, and sitting 
there all night with a fixed rifle, he fired bullet 



Back at Loos 255 

after bullet down the highway. His game was to 
hit cobbles near the German trenches, from there 
the bullet went splattering and ricochetting, hop- 
ping and skipping along the road for a further 
five hundred yards, making a sound like a pebble 
clattering down the tiles of a roof. Many a 
Boche coming along that road must have heartily 
cursed the energetic Porthos. 

Suddenly the report of firearms came from the 
open in front, then followed two yells, loud and 
agonising, and afterwards silence. What had 
happened? Curiosity prompted me to rush into 
the trench, leaving a dead soldier half buried, 
and make inquiries. All the workers had ceased 
their labour, they stood on the fire-steps staring 
into the void in front of them, their ears tensely 
strained. Something must have happened to the 
patrol, probably the officer and two men had been 
surprised by the enemy and killed. . . . 

As we watched, three figures suddenly emerged 
from the greyness in front, rushed up to the para- 
pet, and flung themselves hastily into the trench. 
The listening patrol had returned. Breathlessly 
they told a story. 

They had examined the enemy's wire and were 



256 The Great Push 

on the way back when one of the men stumbled 
into a shell-hole on the top of three Germans 
who were probably asleep. The Boches scram- 
bled to their feet and faced the intruders. The 
officer fired at one and killed him instantly, one 
of our boys ran another through the heart with 
the bayonet, the third German got a crack on 
the head with a rifle-butt and collapsed, yelling. 
Then the listening patrol rushed hurriedly in, 
told their story and consumed extra tots of rum 
when the exciting narrative was finished. 

The morning country was covered with white 
fogs; Bois Hugo, the wood on our left, stood out 
an island in a sea of milk. Twenty yards away 
from the trench was the thick whiteness, the 
unknown. Our men roamed about the open 
picking up souvenirs and burying dead. Proba- 
bly in the mist the Germans were at work, too. 
. . . All was very quiet, not a sound broke the 
stillness, the riot of war was choked, suffocated, 
in the cold, soft fog. 

All at once an eager breeze broke free and 
swept across the parapet, driving the fog away. 
In the space of five seconds the open was bare, 



Back at Loos 257 

the cloak which covered it was swept off. Then 
we saw many things. 

Our boys in khaki came rushing back to their 
trench, flinging down all souvenirs in their haste 
to reach safety; the French on our right scam- 
pered to their burrows, casting uneasy eyes be- 
hind them as they ran. A machine gun might 
open and play havoc. Porthos had a final shot 
down the road, then he disappeared and became 
one with the field. 

But the enemy raced in as we did; their in- 
decorous haste equalled ours. They had been 
out, too. One side retreated from the other, and 
none showed any great gallantry in the affair. 
Only when the field was clear did the rifles speak. 
Then there was a lively ten minutes and a few 
thousand useless rounds were wasted by the com- 
batants before they sat down to breakfast. 

"A strategic retreat," said Pryor. "I never 
ran so quickly in all my life. I suppose it is 
like this every night, men working between the 
lines, engineers building entanglements, cover- 
ing parties sleeping out their watch, listening pa- 
trols and souvenir hunters doing their little bit 



258 The Great Push 

in their own particular way. It's a funny way 
of conducting a war." 

"It's strange," I said. 

"We have no particular hatred for the men 
across the way," said Pryor. "My God, the 
trenches tone a man's temper. When I was at 
home (Pryor had just had ten days' furlough) 
our drawing-room bristled with hatred of some 
being named the Hun. Good Heavens ! you should 
hear the men past military age revile the Hun. 
If they were out here we couldn't keep them 
from getting over the top to have a smack at 
the foe. And the women! If they were out 
here, they would just simply tear the Germans 
to pieces. I believe that we are the wrong men, 
we able-bodied youths with even tempers. It's 
the men who are past military age who should 
be out here." 

Pryor was silent for a moment. 

"I once read a poem, a most fiery piece of 
verse,'* he continued; "and it urged all men to 
take part in the war, get a gun and get off to 
Flanders immediately. Shame on those who did 
not go ! The fellow who wrote that poem is a bit 
of a literary swell, and I looked up his name in 



Back at Loos 259 

'Who's Who/ and find that he is a year or two 
above military age. If I were a man of seventy 
and could pick up fury enough to write that 
poem, I'd be off to the recruiting agent the mo- 
ment the last line was penned, and I'd tell the 
most damnable lies to get off and have a smack 
at the Hun. But that literary swell hasn't en- 
listed yet." 

A pause. 

"And never will," Pryor concluded, placing 
a mess-tin of water on a red-hot brazier. 

Breakfast would be ready shortly. 



CHAPTER XIX 

WOUNDED 

"If you're lucky you'll get killed quick; if you're damned 
lucky you'll get 'it where it don't 'urt, and sent back to 
Blighty." — Bill Teake's Philosophy. 

iOME min have all the damned luck that's 
agoin'," said Corporal Flaherty. "There's 
Murney, and he's been at home two times 
since he came out here. Three months ago he 
was allowed to go home and see his wife and to 
welcome a new Murney into the wurl'. Then in 
the Loos do the other day he got a bit of shrap- 
nel in his heel and now he's home again. I don't 
seem to be able to get home at all. I wish I had 
got Murney's shrapnel in my heel. . . . I'm sick 
of the trenches ; I wish the war was over." 

"What were you talking to the Captain about 
yesterday?" asked Rifleman Barty, and he 
winked knowingly. 

"What the devil is it to you?" inquired Flah- 
erty. 

260 



Wounded 261 

"It's nothin' at all to me," said Barty. "I 
would just like to know." 

"Well, you'll not know," said the Corporal. 

"Then maybe I'll be allowed to make a guess," 
said Barty. "You'll not mind me guessin', will 
yer?" 

"Hold your ugly jaw !" said Flaherty, endeav- 
ouring to smile, but I could see an uneasy look 
in the man's eyes. "Ye're always blatherin'." 

"Am I?" asked Barty, and turned to us. 
"Corp'ril Flaherty," he said, "is goin' home on 
leave to see his old woman and welcome a new 
Flaherty into the world, just like Murney did 
three months ago." 

Flaherty went red in the face, then white. He 
fixed a killing look on Barty and yelled at him : 
"Up you get on the fire-step and keep on sentry 
till I tell ye ye're free. That'll be a damned long 
time, me boy!" 

"You're a gay old dog, Flaherty," said Barty, 
making no haste to obey the order. "One 
wouldn't think that there was so much in you; 
isn't that so, my boys? Papa Flaherty wants to 
get home !" 

Barty winked again and glanced at the men 



262 The Great Push 

who surrounded him. There were nine of u ; 
there altogether; sardined in the bay of the 
trench which the Munster Fusiliers held a few 
days ago. Nine! Flaherty, whom I knew very 
well, a Dublin man with a wife in London, Barty 
a Cockney of Irish descent, the Cherub, a stout 
youth with a fresh complexion, soft red lips and 
tender blue eyes, a sergeant, a very good fellow 
and kind to his men. . . . The others I knew 
only slightly, one of them a boy of nineteen or 
twenty had just come out from England; this 
was his second day in the trenches. 

The Germans were shelling persistently all the 
morning, but missing the trench every time. They 
were sending big stuff across, monster of 2 shells 
which could not keep pace with their own sound; 
we could hear them panting in from the un- 
known — three seconds before they had crossed 
our trench to burst in Bois Hugo, the wood at 
the rear of our line. Big shells can be seen in 
air, and look to us like beer bottles whirling in 
space; some of the men vowed they got thirsty 
when they saw them. Lighter shells travel more 
quickly: we only become aware of these when 
they burst; the boys declare that these messen- 



Wounded 263 

gers of destruction have either got rubber heels 
or stockinged soles. 

"I wish they would stop this shelling," said 
the Cherub in a low, patient voice. He was a 
good boy, he loved everything noble and he had 
a generous sympathy for all his mates. Yes, 
and even for the men across the way who were 
enduring the same hardships as himself in an 
alien trench. 

"You know, I get tired of these trenches some- 
times," he said diffidently. "I wish the war was 
over and done with." 

I went round the traverse into another bay 
less crowded, sat down on the fire-step and be- 
gan to write a letter. I had barely written two 
words when a shell in stockinged soles burst with 
a vicious snarl, then another came plonk ! . . . A 
shower of splinters came whizzing through the 
air. . . . Round the corner came a man walking 
hurriedly, unable to run because of a wound in 
the leg; another followed with a lacerated cheek, 
a third came along crawling on hands and knees 
and sat down opposite on the floor of the trench. 

How lucky to have left the bay was my first 



264 The Great Push 

thought, then I got to my feet and looked at the 
man opposite. It was Barty. 

"Where did you get hit?" I asked. 

"There !" he answered, and pointed at his boot 
which was torn at the toecap. "I was just go- 
ing to look over the top when the shell hit and 
a piece had gone right through my foot near 
the big toe. I could hear it .breaking through ; 
it was like a dog crunching a bone. Gawd! it 
doesn't 'arf give me gip!" 

I took the man's boot off and saw that the 
splinter of shell had gone right through, tear- 
ing tendons and breaking bones. I dressed the 
wound. 

"There are others round there," an officer, 
coming up, said to me. I went back to the bay 
to find it littered with sandbags and earth, the 
parapet had been blown in. In the wreckage I 
saw Flaherty, dead; the Cherub, dead, and five 
others disfigured, bleeding and lifeless. Two 
shells had burst on the parapet, blew the struc- 
ture in and killed seven men. Many others had 
been wounded ; those with slight injuries hobbled 
away, glad to get free from the place, boys who 
were badly hurt lay in the clay and chalk, bleed- 



Wounded 265 

ing and moaning-. Several stretcher-bearers had 
arrived and were at work dressing the wounds. 
High velocity shells were bursting in the open 
field in front, and shells of a higher calibre were 
hurling bushes and branches sky-high from Bois 
Hugo. 

I placed Barty on my back and carried him 
down the narrow trench. Progress was difficult, 
and in places where the trench had been three 
parts filled with earth from bursting shells I had 
to crawl on all fours with the wounded man on 
my back. I had to move very carefully round 
sharp angles on the way; but, despite all pre- 
cautions, the wounded foot hit against the wall 
several times. When this happened the soldier 
uttered a yell, then followed it up with a meek 
apology. "I'm sorry, old man ; it did 'urt awful !" 

Several times we sat down on the fire-step and 
rested. Once when we sat, the Brigadier-Gen- 
eral came along and stopped in front of the 
wounded man. 

"How do you feel?" asked the Brigadier. 

"Not so bad," said the youth, and a wan smile 
flitted across his face. "It'll get me 'ome to 
England, I think." 



266 The Great Push 

"Of course it will," said the officer. "You'll 
be back in blighty in a day or two. Have you 
had any morphia?" 

"No." 

"Well, take two of these tablets," said the 
Brigadier, taking a little box from his pocket and 
emptying a couple of morphia pills in his hand. 
"Just put them under your tongue and allow 
them to dissolve. . . . Good luck to you, my 
boy!" 

The Brigadier walked away; Barty placed the 
two tablets under his tongue. 

"Now spit them out again," I said to Barty. 

"Why?" he asked. 

"I've got to carry you down," I explained. "I 
use one arm to steady myself and the other to 
keep your wounded leg from touching the wall 
of the trench. You've got to grip my shoulders. 
Morphia will cause you to lose consciousness, and 
when that happens I can't carry you any fur- 
ther through this alley. You'll have to lie here 
till it's dark, when you can be taken across the 
open." 

Barty spat out the morphia tablets and crawled 
upon my back again. Two stretcher-bearers fol- 



Wounded 267 

lowed me carrying a wounded man on a blanket, 
a most harrying business. The wounded man 
was bumping against the floor of the trench all 
the time, the stretcher-bearer in front had to 
walk backwards, the stretcher-bearer at rear was 
constantly tripping on the folds of the blanket. 
A mile of trench had to be traversed before the 
dressing-station was reached and it took the party 
two hours to cover that distance. An idea of 
this method of bringing wounded away from the 
firing-line may be gathered if you, reader, place 
a man in a blanket and, aided by a friend, carry 
him across the level floor of your drawing-room. 
Then, consider the drawing-room to be a trench, 
so narrow in many places that the man has to be 
turned on his side to get him through, and in 
other places so shaky that the slightest touch may 
cause parados and parapet to fall in on top of you. 
For myself, except when a peculiar injury ne- 
cessitates it, I seldom use a blanket. I prefer to 
place the wounded person prone on my back, get 
a comrade stretcher-bearer to hold his legs and 
thus crawl out of the trench with my burden. 
This, though trying on the knees, is not such 
a very difficult feat. 



268 The Great Push 

"How do you feel now, Barty?" I asked my 
comrade as we reached the door of the dressing- 
station. 

"Oh, not so bad, you know," he answered. 
"Will the M.O. give me some morphia when we 
get in?" 

"No doubt," I said. 

I carried him in and placed him on a stretcher 
on the floor. At the moment the doctor was 
busy with another case. 

"Chummy," said Barty, as I was moving away. 

"Yes," I said, coming back to his side. 

"It's like this, Pat," said the wounded boy. "I 
owe Corporal Darvy a 'arf -crown, Tubby Sinter 
two bob, and Jimmy James four packets of fags 
— woodbines. Will you tell them when you go 
back that I'll send out the money and fags when 
I go back to blighty?" 

"All right," I replied. "I'll let them know." 



CHAPTER XX 

FOR BLIGHTY 

"The villa dwellers have become cave-dwellers." — Dudley 
Pryor. 

THE night was intensely dark, and from 
the door of the dug-out I could scarcely 
see the outline of the sentry who stood on 
the banquette fifteen yards away. Standing on 
tip-toe, I could glance over the parapet, and when 
a star-shell went up I could trace the outline of a 
ruined mill that stood up, gaunt and forbidding, 
two hundred yards away from our front line 
trench. On the left a line of shrapnel-swept trees 
stood in air, leafless and motionless. Now and 
again a sniper's bullet hit the sandbags with a 
crack like a whip. 

Lifeless bodies still lay in the trench; the blood 
of the wounded whom I had helped to carry down 
to the dressing-station was still moist on my tunic 
and trousers. In a stretch of eight hundred yards 

there was only one dug-out, a shaky construction, 

269 



270 The Great Push 

cramped and leaky, that might fall in at any 
moment. 

"Would it be wise to light a fire ?" asked Dilly, 
my mate, who was lying on the earthen floor of 
the dug-out. "I want a drop of tea. I didn't 
have a sup of tea all day." 

"The officers won't allow us to light a fire," I 
said. "But if we hang a ground-sheet over the 
door the light won't get through. Is there a 
brazier?" I asked. 

"Yes, there's one here," said Dilly. "I was 
just going to use it for a pillow, I feel so sleepy." 

He placed a ground-sheet over the door while 
speaking and I took a candle from my pocket, lit 
it and placed it in a little niche in the wall. Then 
we split some wood with a clasp-knife, placed it 
on a brazier, and lit a fire over which we placed 
a mess-tin of water. 

The candle flickered fitfully, and dark shadows 
lurked in the corners of the dug-out. A mouse 
peeped down from between the sandbags on the 
roof, its bright little eyes glowing with mischief. 
The ground-sheet hanging over the door was 
caught by a breeze and strange ripples played 



For Blighty 271 

across it. We could hear from outside the snap 
of rifle bullets on the parapet. . . . 

"It's very quiet in here," said Dilly. "And I 
feel so like sleep. I hope none get hit to-night. 
I don't think I'd be able to help with a stretcher 
down to the dressing-station until I have a few 
hours' sleep. . . . How many wounded did we 
carry out to-day ? Nine?" 

"Nine or ten," I said. 

"Sharney was badly hit," Dilly said. "I don't 
think he'll pull through." 

"It's hard to say," I remarked, fanning the fire 
with a newspaper. "Felan, the cook, who was 
wounded in the charge a month ago, got a bul- 
let in his shoulder. It came out through his 
back. I dressed his wound. It was ghastly. 
The bullet pierced his lung, and every time he 
breathed some of the air from the lung came 
out through his back. I prophesied that he 
would live for four or five hours. I had a letter 
from him the other day. He's in a London hos- 
pital and is able to walk about again. He was 
reported dead, too, in the casualty list." 

"Some people pluck up wonderfully," said 
Dilly. "Is the tea ready?" 



272 The Great Push 

"It's ready," I said. 

We sat down together, rubbing our eyes, for 
the smoke got into them, and opened a tin of 
bully beef. The beef with a few biscuits and a 
mess-tin of warm tea formed an excellent repast. 
When we had finished eating we lit our ciga- 
rettes. 

"Have you got any iodine?" Dilly suddenly 
inquired. 

"None," I answered. "Have you?" 

"I got my pocket hit by a bullet coming up 
here," Dilly answered. "My bottle got smashed." 

Iodine is so necessary when dressing wounds. 
Somebody might get hit during the night. . . . 

"I'll go to the dressing-station and get some," 
I said to Dilly. "You can have a sleep." 

I put my coat on and went out, clambered up 
the rain-sodden parados and got out into the 
open where a shell-hole yawned at every step, 
and where the dead lay unburied. A thin mist 
lay low, and solitary trees stood up from a sea 
of milk, aloof, immobile. The sharp, penetra- 
ting stench of wasting flesh filled the air. 

I suddenly came across two lone figures dig- 
ging a hole in the ground. I stood still for a 



For Blighty 273 

moment and watched them. One worked with 
a pick, the other with a shovel, and both men 
panted as they toiled. When a star-shell went 
up they threw themselves flat to earth and rose 
to resume their labours as the light died away. 

Three stiff and rigid bundles wrapped in 
khaki lay on the ground near the diggers, and, 
having dug the hole deep and wide, the diggers 
turned to the bundles; tied a string round each 
in turn, pulled them forward and shoved them 
into the hole. Thus were three soldiers buried. 

I stopped for a moment beside the grave. 

"Hard at work, boys?" I said. 

''Getting a few of them under," said one of 
the diggers. "By God, it makes one sweat, this 
work. Have you seen a dog about at all?" was 
the man's sudden inquiry. 

"No," I answered. "I've heard about that 
dog. Is he not supposed to be a German in dis- 
guise?" 

"He's old Nick in disguise," said the digger. 
"He feeds on the dead, the dirty swine. I don't 
like it all. Look! there's the dog again." 

Something long, black and ghostly took shape 
in the mist ten yards away and stood there for 



274 The Great Push 

a moment as if inspecting us. A strange thrill 
ran through my body. 

"That's it again," said the nearest digger. 
"I've seen it three times to-night; once at dusk 
down by Loos graveyard among the tombstones, 
again eating a dead body, and now — some say 
it's a ghost." 

I glanced at the man, then back again at the 
spot where the dog had been. But now the ani- 
mal was gone. 

An air of loneliness pervaded the whole place, 
the sounds of soft rustling swept along the 
ground : I could hear a twig snap, a man cough, 
and in the midst of all the little noises which 
merely accentuated the silence, it suddenly rose 
long-drawn and eerie, the howl of a lonely dog. 

"The dirty swine," said the digger. "I wish 
somebody shot it." 

"No one could shoot the animal," said the 
other worker. "It's not a dog; it's the devil 
himself." 

My way took me past Loos church and church- 
yard; the former almost levelled to the ground, 
the latter delved by shells and the bones of the 
dead villagers flung broadcast to the winds of 



For Blighty 275 

heaven. I looked at the graveyard and the white 
headstones. Here I saw the dog again. The 
silver light of a star-shell shot aslant a crumpled 
wall and enabled me to see a long black figure, 
noiseless as the shadow of a cloud, slink past the 
little stone crosses and disappear. Again a howl, 
lonely and weird, thrilled through the air. 

I walked down the main street of Loos where 
dead mules lay silent between the shafts of their 
limbers. It was here that I saw Gilhooley die, 
Gilhooley the master bomber, Gilhooley the Irish- 
man. 

"Those damned snipers are in thim houses up 
the street," he said, fingering a bomb lovingly. 
"But, by Jasus, we'll get them out of it." Then 
he was shot. This happened a month ago. 

In the darkness the ruined houses assumed 
fantastic shapes, the fragment of a standing wall 
became a gargoyle, a demon, a monstrous ani- 
mal. A hunchback leered down at me from a 
roof as I passed, his hump in air, his head thrust 
forward on knees that rose to his face. Further 
along a block of masonry became a gigantic 
woman who was stepping across the summit of 



276 The Great PusH 

a mountain, her shawl drawn over her head and 
a pitcher on her shoulder. 

In the midst of the ruin and desolation of the 
night of morbid fancies, in the centre of a square 
lined with unpeopled houses, I came across the 
Image of Supreme Pain, the Agony of the Cross. 
What suffering has Loos known? What tor- 
ture, what sorrow, what agony? The crucifix 
was well in keeping with this scene of desolation. 

Old Mac of the R.A.M.C. was sitting on a 
blanket on the floor of the dressing-station 
when I entered. Mac is a fine singer and a 
hearty fellow; he is a great friend of mine. 

"What do you want now?" he asked. 

"A drop of rum, if you have any to spare," I 
answered. 

"You're a devil for your booze," Mac said, 
taking the cork out of a water bottle which he 
often uses for an illegitimate purpose. "There's 
a wee drappie goin', man." 

I drank. 

"Not bad, a wee drappie," said Mac. "Ay, 
mon ! it's health tae the navel and marrow to the 
bones." 

"Are all the others in bed?" I asked. Several 



For Blighty 277 

hands worked at the dressing-station, but Mac 
was the only one there now. 

"They're having a wee bit kip down in the 
cellar," said Mac. "I'll get down there if you 
clear out." 

"Give me some iodine, and I'll go," I said. 

He rilled a bottle, handed it to me, and I went 
out again to the street. A slight artillery row 
was in progress now, our gunners were shelling 
the enemy's trenches and the enemy were at work 
battering in our parapets. 

A few high explosives were bursting at the 
Twin Towers of Loos and light splinters were 
singing through the air. Bullets were whizzing 
down the street and snapping at the houses. I 
lit a cigarette and smoked, concealing the glow- 
ing end under my curved fingers. 

Something suddenly seemed to sting my wrist 
and a sharp pain shot up my arm. I raised my 
hand and saw a dark liquid dripping down my 
palm on to my fingers. 

"I wonder if this will get me back to Eng- 
land," I muttered, and turned back to the 
dressing-station. 



278 The Great Push 

Mac had not gone down to the cellar; the 
water bottle was still uncorked. 

"Back again?" he inquired. 

"It looks like it," I replied. 

"You're bleeding, Pat," he exclaimed, seeing 
the blood on my hand. "Strafed, you bounder, 
you're strafed." 

He examined my wound and dressed it. 

"Lucky dog," he said, handing me the water 
bottle. "You're for blighty, man, for blighty. 
I wish to God I was! Is it raining now?" he 
asked. 

"It is just starting to come down," I said. 
"How am I to get out of this?" I inquired. 

"There'll be an ambulance up here in a wee," 
Mac said, then he laughed. "Suppose it gets 
blown to blazes," he said. 

"It's a quiet night," I remarked, but I was 
seized with a certain nervousness. "God! it 
would be awkward if I really got strafed now, 
on the way home." 

"It often happens, man," said Mac, "and we 
are going to open all our guns on the enemy at 
two o'clock. They're mobilizing for an attack, 
it's said." 



For Blighty 279 

"At two o'clock," I repeated. "It's a quarter 
to two now. And it's very quiet." 

"It'll not be quiet in a minute," said my friend. 

I had a vivid impression. In my mind I saw 
the Germans coming up to their trench through 
the darkness, the rain splashing on their rifles 
and equipment, their forms bent under the 
weight which they carried. No doubt they had 
little bundles of firewood with them to cook their 
breakfasts at dawn. They were now thanking 
God that the night was quiet, that they could 
get into the comparative shelter of the trenches 
in safety. Long lines of men in grey, keeping 
close to the shelter of spinneys sunk in shadow; 
transport wagons rumbling and jolting, drivers 
unloading at the "dumps," ration parties cross- 
ing the open with burdens of eatables; men think- 
ing of home and those they loved as they sat in 
their leaky dug-outs, scrawling letters by the light 
of their guttering candles. This was the life that 
went on in and behind the German lines in the 
darkness and rain. 

Presently hell would burst open and a million 
guns would bellow of hatred and terror. I sup- 
posed the dead on the fields would be torn and 



280 The Great Push 

ripped anew, and the shuddering quick out on the 
open where no discretion could preserve them 
and no understanding keep them, would plod 
nervously onward, fear in their souls and terror 
in their faces. 

Our own men in the trenches would hear the 
guns and swear at the gunners. The enemy 
would reply by shelling the trench in which our 
boys were placed. The infantry always suffers 
when Mars riots. All our guns would open fire. 
... It would be interesting to hear them speak. 
... I would remain here while the cannonade 
was on. ... It would be safer and wiser to go 
than stay, but I would stay. 

"Is there another ambulance besides the one 
due in a minute or two coming up before dawn, 
Mac?" I asked. 

"Another at four o'clock," Mac announced 
sleepily. He lay on the floor wrapped in his 
blanket and was just dozing off. 

"I'm finished with war for a few weeks at 
least," I muttered. "I'm pleased. I hope I get 
to England. Another casualty from Loos. The 
dead are lying all round here; civilians and sol- 
diers. A dead child lying in a trench near 



For Blighty 281 

Hulluch. I suppose somebody has buried it. I 
wonder how it got there. . . . The line of 
wounded stretches from Lens to Victoria Station 
on this side, and from Lens to Berlin on the 
other side. . . . How many thousand dead are 
there in the fields round there? . . . There will 
be many more, for the battle of Loos is still pro- 
ceeding. . . . Who is going to benefit by the 
carnage, save the rats which feed now as they 
have never fed before? . . . What has brought 
about this turmoil, this tragedy that cuts the 
heart of friend and foe alike? . . . Why have 
millions of men come here from all corners of 
Europe to hack and slay one another? What 
mysterious impulse guided them to this maiming, 
murdering, gouging, gassing, and filled them 
with such hatred? Why do we use the years 
of peace in preparation for war? Why do men 
well over the military age hate the Germans more 
than the younger and more sober souls in the 
trenches? Who has profited by this carnage? 
Who will profit? Why have some men joined 
in the war for freedom?" 

Suddenly I was overcome with a fit of laugh- 
ter, and old Mac woke up. 



282 The Great Push 

"What the devil are you kicking up such a row 
for?" he grumbled. 

"Do you remember B , the fellow whose 

wound you dressed one night a week ago ? Bald 
as a trout, double chin and a shrapnel wound in 
his leg. He belonged to the Regiment." 

"I remember him," said Mac. 

"I knew him in civil life," I said. "He kept 

a house of some repute in . The sons of the 

rich came there secretly at night; the poor 

couldn't afford to. Do you believe that B 

joined the Army in order to redress the wrongs 
of violated Belgium?" 

Mac sat up on the floor, his Balaclava helmet 
pulled down over his ears, and winked at me. 

"Ye're drunk, ye bounder, ye're drunk," he 
said. "Just like all the rest, mon. We'll have 
no teetotallers after the war." 

He lay down again. 

"I know a man who was out here for nine 
months and he never tasted drink," I said. 

Mac sat up again, an incredulous look on his 
face. 

"Who was he ?" he asked. 

"The corporal of our section," I replied. 



For Blighty 283 

"Well, that's the first I've heard o'," said Mac. 
"He's dead, isn't he?" 

"Got killed in the charge," I answered. "I saw 
him coming back wounded, crawling along with 
his head to the ground like a dog scenting the 
trail." 

Sleep was heavy in my eyes and queer 
thoughts ran riot in my head. "What is to be 
the end of this destruction and decay? That is 
what it means, this war. Destruction, decay, 
degradation. We who are here know its degra- 
dation; we, the villa dwellers, who have become 
cave dwellers and make battle with club and 
knobkerry; the world knows of the destruction 
and decay of war. Man will recognise its fu- 
tility before he recognises its immorality. . . . 
Lines of men marching up long, poplar-lined 
roads to-day; to-morrow the world grows sick 
with their decay. . . . They are now one 
with Him. . . . Yes, there He is, hanging on 
the barbed wires. I shall go and speak to 
Him. . . ." 

The dawn blushed in the east and grew red- 
der and redder like a curtain of blood — and 
from Souchez to Ypres the poppy fields were of 



284 The Great Push 

the same red colour, a plain of blood. For miles 
and miles the barbed wire entanglements wound 
circuitously through the levels, brilliant with star- 
clusters of dew-drops hung from spike, barb and 
intricate traceries of gossamer. Out in front 
of my bay gleamed the Pleiades which had 
dropped from heaven during the night and clus- 
tered round a dark grey bulk of clothing by one 
of the entanglement props. I knew the dark 
grey bulk, it was He; for days and nights He 
had hung there, a huddled heap; the Futility of 
War. 

I was with Him in a moment endeavouring to 
help Him. In the dawn He was not repulsive, 
He was almost beautiful, but His beauty was 
that of the mirage which allures to a more sure 
destruction. The dew-drops were bright on His 
beard, His hair and His raiment; but His head 
sank low upon the wires and I could not see 
His face. 

A dew-drop disappeared from the man's beard 
as I watched and then another. Round me the 
glory of the wires faded; the sun, coming out 
warm and strong, dispelled the illusion of the 
dawn; the galaxy faded, leaving but the rugged 



For Blighty 285 

props, the ghastly wires and the rusty barbs 
nakedly showing in the poppy field. 

I saw now that He was repulsive, abject, piti- 
ful lying there, His face close to the wires, a 
thousand bullets in his head. Unable to resist 
the impulse I endeavoured to turn His face up- 
ward, but was unable; a barb had pierced His 
eye and stuck there, rusting in the socket from 
which sight was gone. I turned and ran away 
from the thing into the bay of the trench. The 
glory of the dawn had vanished, my soul no 
longer swooned in the ecstasy of it; the Pleiades 
had risen, sick of that which they decorated, the 
glorious disarray of jewelled dew-drops was no 
more, that which endured the full light of day 
was the naked and torturing contraption of war. 
Was not the dawn buoyant, like the dawn of 
patriotism? Were not the dew-decked wires war 
seen from far off? Was not He in wreath of 
Pleiades glorious death in action? But a ray of 
light more, and what is He and all with Him but 
the monstrous futility of war. . . . Mac tugged 
at my shoulder and I awoke. 

"Has the shelling begun?" I asked. 

"It's over, mon," he said. "It's four o'clock 



286 The Great Push 

now. You'll be goin' awa' from here in a min- 
ute or twa." 

"And these wounded?" I asked, looking round. 
Groaning and swearing they lay on their stretch- 
ers and in bloodstained blankets, their ghastly 
eyes fixed upon the roof. They had not been 
in when I fell asleep. 

"The enemy replied to our shellin'," said Mac 
curtly. 

"Ay, 'e replied," said a wounded man, turn- 
ing on his stretcher. " 'E replied. Gawd, 'e 
didn't 'arf send some stuff back! It was quiet 
enough before our blurry artillery started. 
They've no damned consideration for the pore 
infantry. . . . Thank Gawd, I'm out of the 
whole damn business. . . . I'll take damn good 
care that I . . ." 

"The ambulance car is here," said Mac. "All 
who can walk, get outside." 

The rain was falling heavily as I entered the 
Red Cross wagon, 3008 Rifleman P. MacGill, 
passenger on the Highway of Pain, which 
stretched from Loos to Victoria Station. 



The: end 

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